The Laundry Man

As I mentioned in the About Page, my ridiculous sister has a habit of attracting and maintaining relationships with unstable people. I am not sure if it is an odour that she gives off or just that she has an odd way of seeing how absurd the situation is.

When I first arrived in Phnom Penh, we stayed at a place that included laundry to be taken away to be cleaned, something like 100 pieces per month. We stayed for just longer than a month and by the end of it, I could not be part of the laundry protocol. You might think that having someone do your laundry is easier, but when you have to count everything out and mark every different piece of clothing down in different categories, it can be quite time consuming!

My sister is more adamant about cleaning clothes than I am, so I let her take this responsibility. Since then, every time our laundryman came to visit he was ecstatic about counting our dirty stinking clothes. So much so that when the time came for us to leave he was devastated. I mean DEVASTATED, he was in our apartment for an hour crying about why we had to leave. He offered us free laundry cleaning, he offered to come to our new place and clean our clothes – twice as much as we are usually allowed!

How does this happen? And is my sister responsible for this behavior? Probably, I am not sure what she said, but it was obviously too nice. Even I felt like I was letting him down by moving out and I only ignored him every time he came to our room! Conversely, my sister is the opposite and asks all about his family and personal life, where he comes from and his dreams… she was probably his only friend.

Sometimes there are clingy people and sometimes there are easily clung people - which my ridiculous sister is one of. And although you might not always be able to support the clingers, I like to think that at least a little bit of affection and a genuine smile goes a long way (and might get you a few more pieces of clean laundry)!