Earlier this week, my entire load of darks was nicked from the laundromat I frequent. The following is an open letter to the person (or persons) who decided they had the right to take what is not theirs. I will be posting this on the bulletin board of the laundry, in hopes that they return and are able to read.
Dear Thieving Bastard(s),
For a moment I felt sorry for you. Someone who would abscond with an entire load of someone else’s clothes still warm from the dryer has to be desperate, right?
I even gave you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you were in a hurry and opened the wrong machine and took the wrong clothes. That’s why I gave my cell # to the owner of the laundromat and told her to contact me if you returned them all red-faced and apologetic. But that was three days ago, and no one has called. So I am writing this without guilt.
I bet you think I deserve this. I didn’t want to wait around, burning up in my coat and scarf and making eye contact with strangers, for my stuff to dry. It’s my fault for choosing to run a few errands and return half an hour later. Or maybe it was closer to 40 minutes. So it’s my fault that you loaded up your sack (perhaps with a tell-tale $ on it) with my jeans, socks and several animal rights T-shirts (a good chunk of my wardrobe) and ran. You wouldn’t even grant me the dignity of leaving my underwear.
There are a number of conclusions I could draw:
You are so clothing-deprived that you have to skulk around laudromats and pilfer from unguarded machines. Did you at least check to see that you and I are the same size?
There is some sort of stolen clothing ring you are a part of and you are making money off my modest threads. If that’s the case, people are giving away mountains of clothes every day on Craigslist and Freecycle. You can just pretend you stole them.
You are a pathetic, disgusting pervert and are doing things with my unmentionables that are best not mentioned. Euugh!
Or simply, you are a scumbag who thinks such acts of pettiness make you a badass and you’re bragging to your friends as I write this.
Regardless, you stole from me.
I am not a rich person. Some months I barely make enough money to put a roof over my head and food in my cat’s bowl. Thanks to you I have a single pair of jeans left in my closet and they don’t fit me nearly as well as the ones you made off with. And thanks to you, I have to dig into the underwear reserve at the back of my bottom drawer and wear uncomfortable thongs and old pairs with barely enough elasticity left to stay on my butt because they’re clean.
No, I do not hope you’re proud of yourself. But no doubt, you are.
Because of you I now have to waste my valuable time watching my clothes tumble around in the dryer (and watched clothes never dry) for fear that I’ll never see them again.
All I can do is hope that you’re allergic to my laundry detergent and develop a horrible, itchy rash that never lets up no matter how hard or often you scratch and you bleed. See how badass that feels.
Thanks for nothing,
Lesly
