It’s kind of funny how childhood trauma influences adulthood.

For example, my family lost our house to a fire.
Everything, from records, to Cabbage Patch Dolls, to the goldfish in the five-gallon tank by the big picture window, was gone in less than an hour.

After a couple of weeks’ stay at a hotel, dad rented a house on the poorer side of town. It was owned by a slum lord that we had a passing acquaintance with. The house wasn’t in the best shape, of course, but it was big enough for the five of us.

During that time, we didn’t have a washer or dryer.
Mom and dad were working crazy hours and multiple jobs. As the oldest, I wasn’t old enough to have an outside job. I think I was just in seventh grade. My first job would come a couple of years later at Rallys and last for a full day.

But, I had three main points of purpose.

* I needed to care for my brother and sister. I feel like I did in the best way with how I understood how the world worked at the time.

* We had a massive amount of coins. Nickles. Pennies. Dimes. Quarters. My siblings and I had to roll them for the bank. Back then, we couldn’t take coins to the local Wal-Mart to have them automatically counted. Those machines didn’t exist yet. The bank would charge a fee of something like 10% if they counted them. So, it fell to us. But, primarily, I think it fell to me.

Not to brag, but I got to be so good that I could count and roll coins correctly using both hands. The skill served me well when, in high school, I counted dimes from the copier for the librarian.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see the black stain on the carpet in the living room. The coins were covered with soot as they had somehow survived the fire and not melted into the plastic five-gallon buckets. The coins were primarily from dad’s selling of soda to his co-workers at the foundry. I’m pretty sure that my hands were black or, at the very least, gray from handling them. I also think that this is why it’s so easy for me to identify the smell of burning and soot to this day.

* Finally, I had to do laundry.
We didn’t have a lot of clothes and, fortunately, a laundromat was within walking distance. I would walk there a couple of times a week or mom would drop me off. Armed with some coins, homework, and a book, I would sit, watch, and wait.

But, I’m not very good at watching and waiting.
After the homework was done and if the book was boring, I would start cleaning the laundromat.
I didn’t sweep. I didn’t have access to a broom. But, I would take some dirty clothes and wipe the accumulated fuzz from the washers and dryers. Moreover, I would clean the dryer’s lint screens. No one ever did that. For some reason, I developed a fascination for how thick and long the fuzz was that I peeled off of the lint screen’s mesh. Sometimes, the lint would be in different colors. Mostly, however, it was just deep gray.

In doing so, I noticed that it didn’t take nearly as long for the clothes to dry. I was adding a finer edge to how I was supporting my family and everyone else. I didn’t just remove the lint from the dryer I used. I would go through all the machines. I think there were around thirty of them thinking that I was helping others too.

I took it a step further which might be related to some mental illness.
After the lint was removed, I would try to reach inside the machine to remove the lint that I couldn’t see. There was always a lot of it.

In short order, my book and homework became forgotten. It was as if I had become an employee of the laundromat. The cleaning and removal of lint were feeding directly into some OCD I had been unknowingly harboring.

While I haven’t been in a laundromat for several years, the dust that builds up in mom’s laundry room while I am away annoys me to no end. Likewise, the dirt and dust that accumulate in the garage… Floridians keep their washer and dryer in garages like animals for some reason… is always one of the first things I clean.

If or when I ever visit a laundromat for any amount of time, I know that I’ll be picking through the lint screens within ten minutes.

It’s just one of the things that sticks with me.
I guess.