Saturday Night: Quarters Adventure

If you've ever been a college student, you probably know the major value of quarters, and what they do to you when you see them.

Or maybe it's just me. 

But whenever I see a quarter, or handful of quarters, I start thinking about how many loads of laundry I could do with those quarters. Or I think about how many more quarters I might need.

For me, quarters = laundry. And no matter how I try, I can't look at quarters without thinking about doing my laundry. (And I can't look at washers and dryers without thinking about quarters.)

With how busy our lives have been lately, neither Tyler nor I had time to get quarters at the bank last week.

So, Saturday night came, and I realized that we needed quarters.

And of course, the banks were closed. (After all, it was about 7:30 on a Saturday. The banks had been closed for quite a while.)

And, because Tyler and I had recently decided to try to use less gas, we decided to walk the six blocks-ish down to the Wash Hut and use their change machine to get quarters. Despite the oncoming darkness.


But when we got there, the machines had stickers on them stating that they were for customers only. (Which we would have known had we ever used the Wash Hut before.)

Well, folks. We were in a dilemma. It was getting dark, and we needed quarters. But we didn't want to violate their customers-only rule. And we didn't want to use the car to go to another laundromat.

So we did the sensible thing. We decided to walk to the next laundromat, which wasn't THAT far from where we were.

Or at least, it shouldn't have been.

But we missed a turn -- Well, we chose not to take it. We thought we could walk down the street a little further and take a different turn that would put us closer to the laundromat when we came out of the neighborhood. Except we were wrong. (I blame Provo city planners for not planning well enough.)

So, we overshot the laundromat and had to backtrack. And get this. The change machines at this laundromat were out of order. So no quarters for us. (It's a good thing Tyler and I like each other. Otherwise that 40ish-minute walk would have been a waste. But we did enjoy spending the time together walking.)

So what did we do? We headed straight back to the Wash Hut and got quarters from their change machines. I justified their customers only sticker by saying that by buying quarters from their change machines, we became customers. It's essentially the same transaction you'd make at a bank. But the change machine cuts out the middle man. Plus, we've had friends who were customers of the Wash Hut. (Which makes us customers by extension, right?)

Anyway, we made it back home from the far-away, anti-change-machine-laundromat on Ninth in about 25 minutes (including our second Wash Hut stop). The walk to get quarters ended up being about 2 miles (I think). But we got our quarters.

And you know what? Saturday night, I did laundry. And enjoyed every quarter I spent doing it.