laundry

Seventeen more dollars to the Nepalese cleaners and launderers.

They have this globe in there on their counter when you walk in; it is a lot like the one we had growing up, the one with those stippled little bumps for mountains (the poison ivy rashes I had a few years ago--I had to take a steroid pack--exhibited this same bumpiness, I was reminded of this globe then too, which was interesting as that recollection came from a biological condition on my body rather than seeing a similar geographical tool as I am talking about here, here at our local launderers).

Later, the globe (my globe, of the past) began getting this little hole (somewhere over the Murray oceanic trench, appropriately; appropriately, that is, in its cavernous parallels) that gradually got bigger and bigger.

By their nature, that is what holes do.

At first I could put the tip of my pinkie in there then later, not too much later, an index finger.

I noticed that the inside was a light brown cardboard.

This fascinated me (then, now) and I don't really know why.

Perhaps because it was not what I was expecting; then again, I am not too sure what I actually expected at all as to the physical make-up of a student's world globe--a simulation of a molten core?

I ripped it open with my hands (which could fit simultaneously, now, into those gaping depths).

Fast forward: suddenly, right at this moment, I realize if I itemize my taxes I could probably write some of this off as a work expense.

The clothes, I mean, not the globes of my past.