What to do when a rogue pen commits Hara-kiri in your fucking laundry.


It was as if the Devil snuck in my house during the night and rubbed one out in my dryer.

 This happens to everyone at least once in their life.

For me, this wasn’t the first time. The first time happened when we were still living back in Ohio. My son was too young to start doing his laundry on his own so I was doing it for him. It was late and I wanted to throw a load of laundry in the dryer before I hit the sack. When I got up the next morning, I went into the basement to bring the load of laundry up so I wouldn’t forget about it as the day bore on.

As I was unloading the dryer, I started to see little blue splotches here and there on his clothes. “Godfuckingdamnit” I say (because that’s what I always say when shit goes wrong: true fact) as I start to check pockets. Lo! And Behold! In a pocket of his dungarees, I find the culprit: One of my pens that the little shit pocketed while I wasn’t looking. He was 5 or 6 at the time so not checking his pockets for pens was perfectly reasonable. I finish surveying the damage and the only thing that happened on the inside of the dryer was a big, blue Van Gogh-like smear, high on the rear wall of the dryer. The washer and dryer we bought used so one smear was inconsequential: the boy’s clothes took on most of the contents of the pen. I managed to save most of them except for one or two items.

Advance the tape to this past September.

This time, I’m doing my own laundry and it’s the same scenario: I wanted to throw my stuff in the dryer before I went to bed because the next day, the entire family was going to the eldest child’s gymnastic performance.

The next day rolls around and I need to get some fresh clothes on. Naturally all of my shit was in the dryer and when I went to get it, that’s when I saw the horror scene above.

One pen. One fucking pen slipped through my net. That’s what caused all of that shit.

Time was of the essence, so I found clothing items that weren’t sullied by my own ignorance and I hot-footed it to the google machine. After five minutes of link clicking, I found something that sounded like a feasible work-around.

My fixing of this grievous error was paramount. As we have relocated to a different state, we saw fit to purchase a washer and dryer that were brand new. New “house things”, like appliances, matter to my wife a great deal. The reasons as to why this is, are our own.



After mixing an appropriate amount of Comet Cleanser and Resolve liquid stain remover, I got what you see on the right, here. Depending on how badly you fucked up your dryer, you need to play with the ratios of the product and the resulting consistencies: it’s got to be pasty but not so pasty that you need to get a putty knife to put the shit on.

So, after getting the right consistency it was time to go to the gymnastic performance. The kid did awesome and it wasn’t a horrible experience in the least bit. (I’ll probably be posting pictures and saying something about the merits of extracurriculars for children at a later date).

After family time was over and we did some additional messing about and getting lunch to celebrate said performance, it was time for me to come home and receive my comeuppance.

In all, I spent more time than I should have but I wanted to be sure that I got every little bit of ink out of there. I felt like a damn fool.


This was mid-way through the cleaning process.

Basically it’s “wax on, wax off”. Rub your mixture on with an old rag and then rub it off with an additional, damp rag until you get the result that you are going for.


This was the end result of going above and beyond: probably spent about 90 minutes total spit-shining this bitch.

Lessons Learned: 

  1. Stop doing shit right before bed.
  2. ALWAYS check your pockets. Even when you’re not up for laundry duty.
  4. If you fuck up, fix it. And then, go a little bit beyond. It’ll help you out later on in life.