In the Pink

So I'm doing laundry Friday night and I notice as I'm pulling clothing out of the dryer that everything is kind of pink. Five pair of pants, two pair of shorts, several shirts--all have streaks of pink. There's no shred of red clothing in the load, and I'm a bit flumoxed to have ruined a couple hundred bucks' worth of laundry mysteriously.

Then I notice there are angry blood-red splashes like Freddy Kreuger cut open the dryer door. Upon closer inspection I see that the interior drum of the dryer is also dark red. Puzzled, I look around the basement and see a long table set up with a bowl of red dye and a sheet of streaked plastic with brushes...

"Cha!" I yell. "What did you do to the dryer?"

She dyed costumes for the student performers at her work fundraiser, then threw them still dripping into the dryer. My wife doesn't believe in allowing the dye to set, washing the costumes after, running the washer while empty to rinse the dye out of the machine, washing the costumes again before drying. She simply throws just-dyed clothes into the dryer. Of course the students were amazing, their costumes were lovely, and the entire stage production at Center Stage went off without a hitch, including a great job by Marc Steiner as MC. That's what's so wonderful about Cha--she can stage manage an enormously complicated event and pull it off without a hitch, and then ruin my laundry.

Of course she was so upset she woke up early Saturday and bought me clothes.