I’m alone and waiting for the laundry to dry that I’ve put off all day. 35 minutes left. I began thinking about doing it at 11am when I woke up to kiss Ted goodbye for his first Saturday emergency work session. I didn’t make it out the door until 2:30 when I ran into Alice and we sipped Sweetleaf as our clothes went through their 20 minute wash cycle. But now I am alone because she’s just taken her wash out of the dryer–part of it still drippy–because some murder story broke and, as a news producer, she has to figure out how to cover it.

Which is why I am alone and content. Not that I didn’t appreciate Alice’s company, but she’d understands what I mean. We’d talked about our mutual strike out. We are 1. introverts, 2. strong, and 3. female in an easily intimidated yet extroverted world. We’d agreed that it isn’t fair that we (introverts) get blamed when we don’t act like something we aren’t (extraverts). We resolved that we just have to be like Queen Rania of Jordan in the Vanity Fair article and accept our office of power and extend our smiles even though we resent it so often. A little arrogant maybe, but I’ll trade you the countless conversations of “Oh, I was offended and thought you were cold.” Conversations can begin two ways, I told Alice. She laughed and said she’d remember that the next time she’s confronted about not initiating a hello.

One minute left to dry and the book I’ve been reading is inquired after by the leather-coated cougar in heels doing laundry next to me. “It’s about the Wall Street players who shorted the sub-prime mortgage market partly because they saw the scheme was a scam on poor people. These men caused the 2008 market crash. ” I say. She sticks her nose up The Big Short and sits at the other end of the store to wait out her purgatory drying sentence. Maybe she thought my sweatpants and worn out Sperry’s were learning a get-rich-quick-scheme and she wanted in. In fact, I’m learning how the get-rich-quick-scheme f’ed the poor and screwed the market.

N’SYNC plays on my iPod as I stuff my laundry into a sheet and into my push cart. No Strings Attached is playing as the young blonde stares at me stacking a laundry basket and pillowcase stuffed with socks on top of my cart. The album is over when I add the pile of wet clothes to the top of my pile of dry clothes and start to leave. “I hope you don’t have to many flights of stairs.” Blondie says, smirking. Which made me think of being an introvert and not liking strangers. Which now makes me think of this book I’ve been reading that should be required reading for the half of the population that makes comments to strangers. It’s called, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.”

*In this post I practiced telling a story in first person narrative in the present tense.