That one time I got stuck in a dryer after a pool party

And the motivating power of personal pride

Several years ago, I lived in Las Vegas. I was young, I was fun, and I was physically flexible. To an abnormal degree, but I didn’t know that yet. I just knew I was able to do stuff not everyone could.

You may be shocked by the wholesome experience I had in Vegas, but when your best friends are your siblings, you have a huge group of single friends from church, and your sister was the unofficial party planner of the Valley for anyone looking for cheap, clean fun, the vices of Vegas held very little appeal.

I mean, why would you want to dress in uncomfortable shoes and not-comfortable clothing, and party on the Strip when you could instead go to an epic slip n’ slide with dozens of fun friends? Said slip n’ slide ran approximately, oh, the length of the Vegas Strip, and down hills surrounding a soccer field. These hills plus Dawn dish soap plus the sprinklers which came on at 9:00pm made this experience very much not for children and a true marvel that no one was injured going off jumps using boogie boards.

The Strip activities also held no appeal in contrast to the cookout and hoe-down we held the middle of the Nevada desert for someone’s birthday? Or endless pool parties with cool people and cute guys with no worry that you might not remember what happened the next day. Also possible is that I just have a different definition of fun from some others, but all I know is we sure had a lot of it—FUN.

At various house parties, I’d started performing the stupid human trick of fitting in dryers. Naturally. With a professional air borne of mounting experience, I would ask the host to see their dryer. Then I would size up that household appliance, compare it to others I had been in, and render my professional assessment. Like the expert I was becoming, I’d deliver my verdict: “Ah. Yes. I think I can fit in this one.”

My roommates began to call me “Ninja,” short for “Dryer Ninja.” We all have talents and gifts, and even though I’m VERY tall, I managed to fit my towering height (newly established by George at a surgery center to legitimately be 5’9’!) in easily half a dozen household dryers. You can safely assume I’d also extricated myself from that same number of dryers.

Spoiler alert: that almost changed one night. On this red letter day, I was waiting my turn for the bathroom to become available for changing out of my suit after a pool party. I asked to see the host’s dryer. As one does.

If I’d been able to get in all the other dryers fully clothed, surely I ought to be able to get in this challenge of a dryer in a swimsuit. Or so I think my advanced logic went. My professional assessment did take note of the slats in this one. But as I shared in my Dear Fellow email the other day, we’re here to “Dare mighty things.”

In went the feet and legs, then my derrière, followed by the shoulders that I didn’t yet know where genetically lax (loose), then my head. Forming my body into a C-shape as best as I could around the slats of the dryer—you’ll remember those slats are part of what ranked this dryer as my highest degree of difficulty yet—it was time for the finishing touch. It wasn’t considered a victory unless the door could be closed, proving that yes, in fact, my entire body had fit in the dryer.

A group had assembled to witness my triumph—the dumb things we sometimes do because we think they’re fun or for attention—and a friend closed the door.

Then she did something no one had done before in my dryer career: she turned the dryer on for approximately 1.6 seconds. I still consider Wanda—name has been changed to protect her from Internet hate—a friend. See above comment about the dumb things we all did for laughs or attention.

For the splittest of seconds, my life flashed before my eyes, and I had a surge of fear-fueled-anger. It was like a joke that wasn’t at all funny, because no one wants to meet their end on Tumble Dry Low. We humans don’t come with care tags for a reason.

She stopped the dryer nearly immediately, but either the drum or I had shifted enough to make extrication…shall we say…tricky. The slats that I had intentionally fit my body around were now pressing into less convenient places in my body. Panic was welling up within me as I could get no major extremity of mine out of the dryer—not head, not an arm/shoulder, not a leg. I suddenly felt like an unwilling participant in one of those baby photo shoots where the baby’s knees are up to their chin in a container of some kind. This was just a lot less cute, and I was feeling a lot less chill than one of those cute babies.

Photo by Marcon Biniyam on Unsplash. MUCH cuter and more relaxed than me in my dryer.

I don’t remember how long I struggled to get out or what all we tried to get me out. This had turned into a group effort as the small crowd realized I wasn’t pretending to not be able to get out. The joke was over and this spectacle had turned a wee bit serious. If I ever get to watch a highlight reel of my life, I hope this one is on there, because I’d like to know if had gotten to the point of discussing calling the fire department, or if that discussion was just happening in my mind. Either way, it seemed inevitable that if I was unable to extricate myself, we would have to call the fire department to use the Jaws of Life to get me out.

They say to beware of pride, but in this case, I’m really grateful for it. It was pride alone that got me out of that dryer because can you just imagine the firehouse chatter? “You had to cut a 26-year-old female wearing a swimming suit out of a DRYER? How long was she in there? And why? You’re POSITIVE no alcohol was involved? Man…what a dummy.” They would’ve been right.

You’ll be glad to know that was the last time I ever got in a dryer. I may not have been the smartest pencil in the box, but I wasn’t above learning from my mistakes—in this case the potentially-lasting crick I incurred in my neck.

Any dumb stupid human tricks you’re willing to share to make me feel better about myself?

Isn’t life cool, and aren’t people interesting?? See you in the next one…