Head in the Dryer

Thanks to my Number 2 son, the inside of my high efficiency dryer is purple. 

My husband walked in the the laundry room to remove a load of clothes for Peter to fold when suddenly there was screaming.  "Oh my Gosh, this is awful!" and "Oh, come quick!"

I thought the laundry room was on fire.

Alas, there were no flames or billows of noxious gas. But the inside of the dryer looked like a monochromatic Jackson Pollock experiment.

"Did you check the pockets?" I hollered.

Indignantly and probably correctly my husband responded "No! I told him too!"

"Since when is a 14 year old trustworthy with any large appliance?" This is the kid who turned chicken nuggets into charcoal by microwaving them for 22 minutes.

After the yelling and accusatory statements, it fell to me to figure out how to keep the laundry from turning blue or purple for the rest of our lives. I briefly thought about buying a new dryer, but then I remembered an old Heloise trick for removing ball point pen with hairspray.  So with my head in the dryer and a 14 year old cloth diaper turned rag, I began spraying the inside of the dryer with hairspray.  The fumes were off the hook. I think I saw Jesus in the back of the dryer.  Miraculously, whether Jesus was there or not, the ink dripped down in long blue and purple lines. It came off, mostly.  We decided the next step was to sacrifice a load of kid laundry before we dared wash a load of white shirts.  So far, so good.

I read a short story once about a lady in England who became so depressed that she turned on the gas and stuck her head in her oven.  I wasn't depressed, but angry, and it wasn't a gas oven but an electric dryer filled with an entire can of aerosol hair glue.

If anyone asks, it's art.