Mr. Laundry.....Sorry Liz

Happy Fourth of July everyone!  And to celebrate our nation's independence, I have decided to share a comical story of my childhood.  There are four characters in this narrative: Bo Wright, Josh Wright, Elizabeth Wright, and Mr. Laundry.  Please to enjoy.  This is for you Laurel Davis and Carolyn Kinney, I hope you see it.


So when my brother and I were younger, we lived in a house with no real laundry room in the house, so my parents used a closet in the hall as kind of a hamper.  So at times, there was a huge pile of dirty laundry there.  I was around 10 or 11, so my sister was 3 or 4. 

I don't remember why I climbed underneath the dirty clothes pile in the closet on this particular day, but I was under there and Elizabeth walked by.  I figured I would have some fun and see where this went.  The conversation went something like this.

Me:  Hey

Elizabeth: ??  Hello?

Me:  Who are you?

Elizabeth:  My name is Jessica (we called her Jessica back then), who are you?

Me:  Um.....well, I'm Mr. Laundry.  I live here with my wife, Mrs. Laundry.

Elizabeth:  Hello Mr. Laundry!  :))))))

She would talk to me, or my brother (whichever one of us was under there at the time), for long periods of time about whatever was going on in her 4-year old life at the moment.  You know, bugs, dolls, mean brothers....those kinds of things. 

When she would ask us if she could come to our house, we would make up some elaborate story about how she would have to go through a cave with bats and shit in it just to get to our door.  It seemed to work.  Sometimes Josh or I would get bored with the Mr. Laundry schtick and say,"Hold on, I'm going to get Mrs. Laundry.  She wants to say hello."  We would hit the floor to make noises like we were going down some stairs, and then make more like we were coming back upstairs.  Then I would talk in a woman's voice and say I was Mrs. Laundry. 

This went on for months, and Elizabeth never even tried to climb into the clothes to discover that it was her brothers and not some mythical dirty clothes man made of clothes.  It was great fun. 

I always imagined myself looking like this.  For those of you who grew up in the eighties or before then, you should know what this thing on the left is.  This is the magical trash heap from Fraggle Rock.  Whenever, the fraggles would have a problem, they would consult the magical trash heap, and she would drop some knowledge on them to help them with their problems.  Genius, Jim Henson, genius. 

I know, of course, we did not look like the magical trash heap.  We probably looked a lot more like the pile of clothes on the right.  It was fun nonetheless, and Elizabeth never suspected a thing.

Little sisters are funny little beings, who given the chance, can enrich the rest of our lives by being gullible or dumb haha.  I'll never forget about Mr. Laundry and the days I spent talking to a four year old in a dumb voice about her day.  To this day, my brother and I talk about Mr. Laundry and how funny and trusting Elizabeth was.  Boy, did we ruin that.....

Tomorrow we'll talk about Home-made haunted houses and how much fun they are for the whole family.  And when I say whole family, I mean me and Josh.  And when I say fun, I mean terrifying for four year old girls....


Here's a bit of nostalgia for your Fraggle Rock fans