Tonight was Laundry Night in room 326 of Angell Hall, and at the Culinary Institute of America, that involves playing with toxic chemicals that have labels specifically advising against mixing them. Despite these clear warnings from companies like Oxyclean and Clorox, mixing whitening agents is the closest thing to a school sport that the CIA has. Students all have their own combinations that they swear will make their chef whites whiter and remove more stains than any other. There is a well-known process for bleaching your whites, involving putting your concoction of whitening agents in a bucket, filling it with water in your room's shower, shoving your jackets in to soak, then taking them to the laundry room to wash. It's a very simple procedure (assuming you don't make a mix of chemicals that will set your room on fire or inebriate everyone on your floor), and most "American monkeys" can probably handle it.
That being said, I blame the bleach fumes entirely for what transpired tonight.
All was going well as my roommate Arbil (Babs) and I filled our bucket and soaked our jackets and aprons. It wasn't until we decided that instead of just pouring out the bleach, water, Oxyclean, and dish soap, then taking the bucket of wet whites downstairs to wash, we would instead prove every ditzy, teenage girl stereotype correct.
We put the wet, bleach soaked whites into Babs' mesh laundry bag, then proceeded to drag it down the hall, into the elevator, down 4 floors, down another hall, and into the laundry room.
Once there, we realized we had neglected to look online to make sure there was actually a washing machine available.. We stood there for a minute contemplating what to do with our dripping bag of whites and no free washer, when lucky for us, no less than 7 people walked in to move their laundry into a drier, all noticing the growing puddle on the floor around our laundry.
After putting our whites into a machine and congratulating ourselves on an accomplished, mature adult laundry session, we started walking back to our room. It didn't take long to notice the very obvious snail slime trail of bleach that ran the entire length of the hall and disappeared into the elevator. After running up the stairs and back to our floor, we were dismayed (though not surprised) to find the bleach trail emerging from the elevator and leading directly to our door.
In continuation of the general "mature adult" theme of the night, we decided to hide in our room until we could figure out what to do.
No less than 5 minutes later, we heard a knock at our door, and I opened it to find one of the new friends we had made in the laundry room holding our forgotten detergent.
"I just followed your trail..."
Poor kid, just moved onto campus and this was his first experience with college laundry.. Must be rough.
We did eventually decide we had to do something about the incriminating trail of toxic fumes (mainly because the trail continued into our room and to the shower), so we took the swiffer and attempted to soak up the bleach. We succeeded more in just spreading the bleach from a swerving line about a food and a half wide to cover the entire width of the hallway, but in the end it dried quicker that way, and everyone assumed someone had drank entirely too much and puked their guts out, instead of just a completely innocent laundry night.
If Dr. Seuss has taught me anything, its that all stories must have a moral, and therefore, the moral of this one is that if you are ever in the need of friends, drag a bag-full of a bleach down the hall of your living complex and just wait for someone to show up.
It's the best calling card since the Joker.
"Most of you have no talent."
Though I do generally appreciate criticism, this is not necessarily how I wanted to start the first day of a new class, at 5am, with a chef I'd only heard horror stories about. We are required to always acknowledge a chef whenever we come across one, though the collective "Good morning, Chef." from the class was a tad slower and more confused than usual...
"Zat being said, I weel try to teach you as much as you can pooosibly take. Probably about as mooch as a donkey."
I have had quite a few chefs with various accents since I've started school, but I've never been quite so relieved to not be able to understand half of what the little French man said. His accent was a wonderful buffer between what he wanted to say to the class of students he'd never met, and what that group of students was actually able to understand.
Though, good news, Chef was dedicated enough to his class to write the highlights of his introductory speech on the board:
do not email, I don't care entremet project
useless
toques under table inspections
will be dishwashers
American monkeys
rosemary and lemon
pvc molds no warnings
knives
Of all the...interesting... pieces of information shared during morning lecture, the part that stood out most to me (as well, I'm sure, to most of my classmates) was that little side-note of "knives".
When he wrote knives on the board, I immediately assumed he would start talking about OUR knives: not sharp enough, too sharp, how "American monkeys" shouldn't be allowed to have them, etc.
Nope.
"Theees ees my ferst block back from being soospended for throwing knives at ze students. Don't make me get soospended again."
Fantastico.
I'd never before been inadvertently threatened so many times before the sun came up. As the day progressed, it was interesting seeing how it would feel to work in an insane asylum that has been taken over by its patients. I could write the most wonderful Literature essay about Animal Farm, now that I've lived it. There was the tyrannical French pig, as well as the terrified farm animals, most of which went insane just a couple chapters in. And you can't forget those animal sacrifices... or in this case, very loud and public beratings.
"Captain Ook could ave made a better cake."
"If dees chocolate is anyteeng to go by, you weel grow up to be a garbage man."
"WHYYYY ARE DERE WATER MARKS IN DE SINK?!!"
The best part of my day was when 1:30pm finally rolled around after 2 hours of cleaning the kitchen, and class was finally over.
"You ave 30 seconds. Get out."
As if I wanted to hang around...
