Washing the kids' clothes.

My dryer broke down a few weeks back and I’m so backed up on washing clothes. Why haven’t I fixed the dryer yet? Well, it isn’t that I haven’t tried. It simply needs one small part to be replaced. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to replace the thing with a new dryer just for one small $30 part. (Although I’ve set a new washer and dryer in my sights for a couple of years out.) I haven’t replaced the part because the manufacturers made the faulty part in question nearly impossible to reach without having the hand size of a small child or taking the entire machine apart. I will fix it eventually. In the meantime I’ve been trekking to the local laundromat.

At first I hated it. I thought it akin to having to take the city bus to work, another activity I’m not a fan of. But after several trips, I’ve come to enjoy it a little. There something about the hum of the machines, the smell of fabric softener and bleach and the spinning of the clothes that is both relaxing and hypnotic. It’s like a short mental retreat now. I’ll take my coffee, a book, and plan on enjoying an hour or two of therapy disguised as washing, drying and folding.

As the first post on this blog, I thought it best to explain the concept of “Big Piece of Chicken”. I m a fan of comedian Chris Rock. The first time I heard the phrase was during his HBO special “Bigger and Blacker in reference to the reward – the big piece of chicken at dinner – good fathers get for going about the normal business of caring for their children. A New York Times article explains, “Mr. Rock excoriates deadbeat dads and laments the lessened importance of the traditional father”.

In the act Rock says,

[The real daddies] Make your world a better, safer place, and what does daddy get? The big piece of chicken. That s all daddy gets is the big piece of chicken.

I certainly don t care about the big piece of chicken and am not looking for praise for doing the normal business of parenting. The love of my children is reward enough. (I know, very high on the sap-o-meter.) I really just think the reference is funny. So how does a father earn the big piece of chicken? David Alan Grier puts it best in song.

Black Daddy: I Get The Big Piece of Chicken