And now, in the center ring!

After over a week of trips to the laundromat to hang with the carnies, my dryer is finally fixed.
It has been an interesting experience.
Normally, the people I saw there I would avoid like the plague--which they may very well carry.
But I found myself studying this strange subculture like a modern day Jane Goodall studied the chimps.
One Friday evening, I found myself battling for two dryers with a one toothed yokel. And watched closely by the other pack members. Of course, they were dressed in jammies, slippers, and holey shirts, and I was fresh from work in dress clothes and heels. So I didn't stick out much as I tried to avoid actually touching her, the dryer, the floor, or anything else while loading four loads on clothes into the two dryers I'd valiantly procured.
I observed laundromat mating rituals involving much loud talking about a truck rally's and barbeque's and drinking alcoholic beverages of the painfully cheap and caustic variety.
I watched men in shirts with cut off sleeves preen before women with big hair, tattoos, and in severe need of dental assistance. They were obviously initiating a mating ritual over the vibration of the washing machine and showing their physical prowess pushing the laundry cart.
I observed women in short shorts, cellulite straining out of the waist and the cut off legs, breasts dangling with no undergarment in sight, sashaying in what I'm sure is an enticing manner, making all their rolls sway in a sickeningly vertigo inducing fashion.
And there were the smaller pack members to study as well. Running around, normally barefoot, and begging for scraps of food from a nearby adult whom I assume was a parental figure. Babies were slung on hips, barefoot and clad only in diapers, dropping pacifiers to the floor, only to find it picked up and handed back with little thought to hygiene.
I could hear the sideshow music in my mind every time I dared tread into this subset of human culture.
It was an interesting foray.
I certainly learned a lot.
And I stopped and got an injection of penicillin, just in case.