Laundry Laughter

One of my favorite pastimes is making fun of my boyfriend, my friends’ boyfriends, or really any of the male species for their shared, weird habits. Men think that women are hard to understand, but I think that we have logic behind our weird habits at the very least. Men on the other hand? Most of the time they can’t even justify their actions because they know they’re ludicrous, and a prime example of this left my friend Rachel and I in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I’m going to recount to you this story that I have entitled Laundry Laughter.

About a week ago I was FaceTiming my boyfriend Matt who was on his 16th full day of having mono when he told me he had a confession for me. Instantly my mind went to all the terrible things he might be confessing like wanting to break up with me, but what he confessed was even better. He said, “McKenna, I’m not going to lie to you - I’ve been wearing dirty underwear for over a week now, because I don’t want to get out of bed long enough to do laundry.” Now some might feel bad for my dearest boyfriend, but while he had mono he had gone to class, gone to his fraternity meetings, AND gone home for an entire weekend where his mom would have been more than happy to wash his underwear (and probably the rest of his laundry for that matter). So despite him having mono, he most definitely had time to wash his underwear so he wasn’t sitting in filth for a week.

Fast forward to this past Sunday, Superbowl Sunday, when I was watching the big game with my friend Rachel and her boyfriend James. I was asking James about moving into his new apartment in Dallas, and he told me all was good except for the fact that he had to rent a washer and dryer. The rented washer and dryer came to them broken, so he told me he really, really had to do laundry the next day after it got fixed since he hadn’t done any since he moved in. I proceeded to tell James the story of my own boyfriend not doing laundry and wearing dirty underwear for a week expecting him to break out in laughter along with Rachel and I. When I finished the story, however, he looked at Rachel and then looked at me and said, “I’m not going to lie, I haven’t done laundry in over 3 weeks so I’ve also been wearing dirty underwear for about a week and a half.” At this, Rachel and I started laughing even more at the stupidity of the men we chose to keep and cherish in our lives. Rachel is an RA in a freshman dorm, so she has access to at least 4-5 washing machines James could’ve used when he visited her every weekend. He also knew I had an apartment and could have asked to use mine, but he did none of those things and instead wore dirty underwear for over a week.

While it seemed that both Matt and James were embarrassed to tell their girlfriends about their unhygienic habits, they didn’t utilize any of the more logical options available to them. They also didn’t seem ashamed or uncomfortable by what they did. I’ll admit Rachel and I did burst into laughter at what became a kind of superiority joke - us being superior since we make it a point to NOT wear dirty underwear - we didn’t mean it in a mean or bullying way as Morreall described the Superiority Theory in Comic Relief. I think that while we’d both admit we feel superior and cleaner, neither of us would ever want our significant others to actually feel bad about these very stupid actions.

In looking back, this outburst of laughter served both as a stress release (since the 49ers were winning the game at this point and we all wanted the Chiefs to win), and also offered the pleasure you can only get from laughing with good friends. I felt a release of tension in my body and it helped lighten the mood that had become somewhat stressful in my apartment. By just this one funny anecdote all 3 of us loosened up and instantaneously got into a better mood. This is why I love laughing!

(Also please enjoy these pictures of Matt and I, and Rachel and James)