Sometimes, when I tell my roommates stories about my day, they look at me with a mix of surprise and horror at the fact that they live with someone who ends up in such a vast amount of uncomfortable situations. It's gotten to the point that Kate, a creative writing major, called my life one giant awkward moment, then started to write a novel for her class based on it. (I called myself her muse and was so proud and she looked at me in the way that said, "I love you, but these are the awkward things I'm talking about.").
The other person who looks at me like that when I tell stories about my life is my boss, Stephanie. She laughs in uncontrollable disbelief every time I tell her something that happened in my life and had me promise to start a section on my blog dedicated to the odd situations I somehow end up in. So, that's what this is: the first entry in that series.
Because I am now planning on making "My Weird Moments" a section of my blog and because I also often find myself in situations that would never happen to normal human beings, I will probably be blogging more often. So, you're welcome, Becca Sutton.
I Washed My Clothes in Oil
Basic household chores are a struggle for me. They always have been and, to the horror of my mother, they probably always will be. It's not that I don't like completing the chores, it's just that I physically can't do them. To put it in perspective, I literally cannot think of an activity I am worse at than vacuuming. On separate occasions during my 22 years of life, I have 1) accidentally vacuumed so hard that I pushed the appliance down a flight of stairs, 2) sucked up an item too large, ultimately causing the bag to tear, and at the same time, whipped myself in the face with the cord, 3) been unable to figure out how to actually turn the vacuum on for over three minutes and most impressively, 4) set off the fire alarm.
Partly because of my inability to vacuum as a normal human adult, but mostly because my father loves buying and experimenting with appliances we probably don't need, my family bought Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner. Roomba is programmed to turn on every day at the same time, make the same path around our first floor, then calmly return back to her home under our mantle. For most families, Roomba would be a great way to keep the house clean on a daily basis.
The Prandato family is not most families (though I think this may have been proven in the fact that we refer to Roomba as a "her" and basically treat her as our weird pet instead of a household appliance, including, but not limited to, yelling at her for plowing into our Christmas presents last year).
Anyway, in Roomba's daily escapade of cleaning our first floor, she always manages to scare the crap out of my dog, Tony. Tony's a big dog with the mind of a muppet and, even though Roomba comes out to play at the same time every day, he loses it. She terrifies him beyond belief and among the barking and hiding on his dog pillow, she once literally scared the crap out of him. Like, literally, he was so horrified by this invention that he did his business on our floor. This would be less of a problem if Roomba was a real animal, but unfortunately, she is a robot and, as it would turn out, the technological advances of our time have not allowed vacuum cleaner robots to sense when there is a large pile of dog feces in the middle of its programmed path. Roomba completely ignored Tony's incident and ran right over it on her merry way, cheerfully smearing the remains all around our living room, then calmly returning back to her home under our mantle.
To say it was a terrible day in the Prandato household would be a vast understatement.
The experience caused us to put a hold on any new inventions my dad wanted to buy. The memories of the horror were too strong and painful for us to trust another appliance that could betray us the way Roomba did. It was too risky to buy something else and we stuck to that rule for a long, long time. We did, that is, until the fryer.
After returning from a business trip to New York City, my father became obsessed with the thought of making his own french fries. Apparently, they ate at an extremely swaggy restaurant one night that boasted about their homemade fries and, in true Prandato fashion, my father tracked down the chef and received exact details on how to make the specific dish. (Growing up in my family, this was a regular occurrence that my brothers and I have since gotten used to. My mom once followed a waiter into a secret room to talk to a man that could only be described as a mob boss in New York City solely to find out the recipe to the chef's broccoli rob. It's fine). Anyway, the chef divulged his recipe, my dad came home from the city and, the next day, the Prandato's were the proud owners of a fryer. In an homage to our 17 years spent living in Idaho, my dad cut up more potatoes than I've probably ever seen in my entire life, double-fried them like the fry-cook he was pretending to be, sprinkled them with aioli garlic, then even served them in glass jars, just like the swaggy NYC restaurant. They were delicious and it was a great evening remembered by all.
Now, I'm not good at vacuuming, but the one household chore that I really do pride myself in is doing my laundry. Granted, I can't fold or iron things, but throwing in clothes and pouring some detergent? I got that. When I went home to Boston over last Christmas break, I accumulated quite a bit of dirty laundry and, shortly after our fry dinner, I decided to clean my clothes for the first time. After jamming at least 75% of my wardrobe into the washer, I grabbed our detergent and began to pour it into the laundry machine. Despite being in the Tide container, the detergent came out yellow instead of the normal bright blue and I was immediately confused. I stopped pouring, looked at the container, looked back at the detergent inside the machine already, then once again back at the container. After further inspection, I saw that the Tide container stated that it was a newer, natural formula and I came to the conclusion that the new formula must have included changing the detergent from a thicker blue liquid to a thinner yellow consistency. I poured the rest of the detergent in and started the machine.
This was a grave mistake.
I didn't notice that anything was wrong until after I took my clothes out of the drier. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what was wrong, but I knew that something abnormal had gone on in the few hours I spent washing my clothes. After individual deliberation, I made my brother and his girlfriend smell my clothes and I think that Sarah really said it best when she described them as "Not necessarily smelling bad, but not necessarily smelling good either." Also, every item I owned was at least two shades darker than it had been when it originally went in the wash. We were confused.
Despite this, no one really believed my claims that something had happened in the wash until a week later, when my mom was in the laundry room and an impressively loud yell of "PETER!" rang up from the basement and circled throughout our home. Turns out, she was attempting to wash her clothes and when she poured out the yellow detergent, immediately realized that it was not, in fact, a "newer, natural formula." It was clearly the leftover oil from the fryer.
The chain of events that led to our fryer oil ending up not only in our laundry room, but in a laundry detergent container, and thus, all over my clothes, was astounding and a situation that would only happen to me. Apparently, after we had our swaggy fry dinner, my dad needed to dispose of the excess oil, but didn't have anything to put it in. He rummaged through our recycling bin and found an empty Tide container, which had conveniently been thrown away that day. After pouring the oil into the container, my dad realized it was no longer recyclable because, you know, it was filled with dirty cooking oil, so he went to go throw it away into the trash cans in our garage.
And, of course, the trash cans in our garage weren't there. That day had been garbage day, so our trash cans were sitting empty at the end of our driveway. It was cold that night and we hadn't gotten a chance to bring them in yet, so my dad placed the Tide/oil concoction on the steps of our garage with full intentions to place it in the trash as soon as we brought the cans in again. And, of course, we all immediately forgot about the Tide container. It sat there, unnoticed, in our garage for a few days before my mom stumbled over it after we had gone grocery shopping. Assuming one of us kids had left it in the garage while bringing in the groceries, she picked it up, then brought it downstairs to unknowingly place a detergent bottle filled with dirty fryer oil in our laundry room, which is literally the last place I would ever expect it to be.
So, that is the story of the time I washed all of my clothes in oil. It's also known as the story of why most of my socks are stained yellow as well as the reason why my father is not allowed to buy another invention for a long, long time.