The Island Laudromat

You just won’t believe who Ida met at the laudromat.
Since we don’t own the kind of sailboat that has its own laundry facility, we’ve spent quite a lot of time over the past 15 years, hanging out in laundromats. It’s certainly not something we talk about at cocktail parties, the way one might drop a little morsel about having had dinner at Jean Georges in New York.
Early on a very wet December day in 2005, we arrived at the marina in Spanish Town, Virgin Gorda with our 5 guests from the Yukon. It had been raining buckets non-stop for 2 days, and every single beach towel was wet… nothing would dry. So, while our guests went on a tour of The Baths (a geographical wonder that I’ll deal with in a future blog), Ida packed up 2 huge bags of these towels and headed off to the laundromat. When she walked in, of course every machine was in use. Our schedule was to have us in The North Sound that same afternoon. The laundry matron apologized, explaining that the best she could do was the next day. At that exact moment, someone bumped into Ida from behind with his bag of laundry, saying, “Pardon me m’am… it’s not like I didn’t see you standing there”. He then turns to the laundry matron, holding up his teeny bag of laundry (probably a pair of jeans, a shirt and some undies) and asks when he can pick it up. She replies, “Right after lunch, dahling”.
By this time, Ida realizes that this ‘someone’ is Morgan Freeman… getting much better service than she.
What else could she do? She motioned with her thumb at Morgan, smiled, and said, “I’m with him!” ©