toby of the day, 3.18.2008

A few years ago, jon and I and our friend hemu were in Greece on the island of santorini. As we sat on the patio of our villa built into a cliff, drinking wine and watching the sunset, jon attempted to capture the moment on film. But, as he approached the edge of the patio, the lense of his camera fell off and rolled down a rain gutter which launched it high into the air where it seemed to hover for just a moment before plummeting onto the doorstep of the house below ours just as a woman was walking out. Naturally, the woman was furious that jon was clearly trying to kill, or at least maim her by hurling his camera lense at her doorstep. He apologized while collecting the shards of his lense, but there was little we could do to placate her. I had forgotten about this incident until recently when we put our new baby carrier into the wash and accidentally closed the door on one of the straps. We realized this too late, and somehow the machine ran anyway, ripping the strap apart, and ruining the rubber seal on the washer. Consequently, the washer wouldn’t open but just kept slowly spinning and telling us it had one minute to go. Our clothes languished in there for 3 days while we kept calling the laundromat owner asking her to release them. When I finally talked to her, I had a rather uncomfortable conversation where she asked us to please not break the washers in the future because they leak a lot of water and are expensive to fix. I tried to explain that we had not intentionally sabotaged her washer with our pricey baby carrier so that our clothes could sit, damp and spinning, for days, becoming mildewed, but somehow she didn’t believe me. I’m not sure why people seem to think we’re out to get them, although jon and I are pretty intimidating, sinister even. I bet if we both wore black and had handlebar mustaches we could start our own mafia. Toby could be our enforcer. The inner sunset would live in terror under his iron fist, well, once his fist isn’t quite so chubby.