You can always count on first-years for a good laugh, even when it comes to something as seemingly mundane as laundry. When Eric C. Liu '98 washed his clothes at college for the first time, he experienced no difficulties. However, doing laundry did not prove a simple task for another first-year Liu encountered. "This girl asked me if I had any quarters, and I saw that the clothes she had put in the dryer weren't wet," Liu recalls, "So I said, 'Uh...don't you have to wash your clothes before you dry them?' and she was kind of embarrassed when she had to clean out all this detergent powder from the dryer."

First-year Lee P. Koffler has also witnessed a bizarre laundry incident. Koffler recounts, "This guy walked into the laundry room with an intense look like he was on some kind of mission. I said hello, but he didn't respond. He placed his laundry on the other side of the room, put some quarters and detergent in a washer, and waited until water filled the washer to the top. Then he went all the way back to his basket, took one sock, walked all the way back to the washer, tossed the sock basketball-style into the filled washer, and vigorously pushed it down into the water. He did the same thing again and again with all his clothes one by one until his basket was empty. Then he gave me this strange look and left without a word."

But what's it like to be on the other end, to be the person actually caught in a peculiar laundry situation? Jay B. Shah '98 knows the feeling. "I was kind of down on this really cold day, and I kept falling asleep in my chair while waiting for my clothes to dry," Shah describes, "I felt the dryer, and it was nice and warm, so I put my head on top of it. Then the dryer stopped. As I opened it, warm air rushed out at me and lulled me right to sleep. I must have been asleep with my head in the dryer for about fifteen minutes when I woke up to see this guy staring at me probably thinking, 'What a freak!'"

Freak? We think not. Rest assured, Jay, it could've happened to anyone. But the girl who put detergent in the dryer...now that's a freak.