The Tale of the Laundry Chute

Warning: This is going to be a long one (thats what he said).

Please keep in mind that in many of these stories, I am not the leading lady. In some, I am just somehow involved and in others, its a group effort. Also, about 90% of my stories being thrown at you involve my cousins and/or family members. For their benefit and for privacy purposes, I am going to change their names. This is really only because I don’t want to ask all 500 of my cousins if I can use their names while regaling these hilarious anecdotes. Lets face it, I’m lazy. Stop judging me.

So, I would like to tell you what I affectionately call “The Tale of the Laundry Chute”. This is my go-to story. When there is an awkward silence, I let break this baby out. I honestly can’t get enough of this story and I rarely make it through without dissolving into a fit of giggles. And yes, I know its probably not the best idea to put this story out into the blogosphere so early in my baby blog’s life, but I don’t care because I LOVE it. Again, stop judging.

Now what you must understand is that when I say that I have 500 cousins, I really only mean like 10. But thats still a lot to have on one side of the family. And THAT means that there was at least one birthday/holiday/random cookout/dinner party a month, so we saw each other a lot. Honestly, there is only so many nintendo games you can play with each other until boredom sets in. We had to get creative.

When I was about 10 or 11, my aunt and uncle re-did their bathroom and decided to put in a laundry chute. The hole to said laundry chute was inside a cabinet. One of us got a brilliant idea to jump down it. We ran all over the house gathering pillows, blankets, sheets, cushions, laundry, and anything else we could find and piled it underneath the hole in the basement (safety first!). We then had to decide who was going to be “the tester”. At first, everyone looked at me to do it. Nice try, guys. I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid. We then decided that Sarah would do it. It is still debated if we decided this for her or if she volunteered for the job. Either way, she was going in.

Into the cabinet she went. Now, I don’t know how Sarah managed what was about it happen or how none of us even realized what was happening, but shit took a wrong turn as soon as she got into the cabinet. Sarah ended up climbing into the hole with her hands at her sides. We had stationed Courtney and Jeremy in the basement in case something went wrong. Lauren and I were in the bathroom helping Sarah in. Everything was running smoothly until Sarah got stuck in the hole at her elbows. Sarah’s legs were dangling from the ceiling in the basement while her top half was still in the bathroom. I remember her just looking at us and saying:

“Um….guys?”

Sarah’s eyes were starting to well up.

“SARAH. DON’T CRY. JUST STOP IT. CALM DOWN.”

We were such dicks.

Lauren ran down the stairs to the basement to update Courtney and Jeremy. You know, just in case they couldn’t tell something had gone horribly wrong with our plan and that the poor girl was stuck in the laundry chute. We tried pulling Sarah out, we tried pushing her down. We did everything our prepubescent undeveloped brains could think of. NOTHING was working. So- we decided to leave her there. She’d be fiiiine, right? We shrugged, closed the cabinet doors, left the bathroom, and sat quietly in the living room.

Naturally, my aunts and uncles were suspicious. When they asked what we were doing, I think we all said a combination of “nothing!”, “waiting for dinner!”, “knitting a sweater!”, “solving world hunger!”, “carpentry!” you know, the usual. We were all silently praying no would ask “Where’s Sarah?”, but the dreaded questions was asked. At that moment, we all looked at each other and mumbled

“Sarah is in the laundry chute”

After that, the memory gets fuzzy. Sarah was freed from her cabinet prison unscathed but possibly a little emotionally damaged (she’ll be fiiiiine). We all (aunts and uncles included) still talk about that day. Putting someone down a laundry chute is something one would do when drunk, nevermind 10 years old and dead sober. I guess we are just really mature or really retarded. I still haven’t decided yet. Its probably a good thing that we only drink with each other on holidays because I can’t even imagine the shenanigans we could come up with when drunk.

I can’t even blame anyone else for dragging me into this situation. I openly and willingly helped shove (or try to) Sarah down a laundry chute. Consider this as my apology, my dear cousin. I think I speak on the behalf of everyone when I say “Holy shit, I am so sorry”. But…it’s still pretty funny though!