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My religion has a certain age where one becomes a man from a boy, for the Jewish religion it is thirteen at the bar-mitzvah. It is a major ceremony with readings from the torah and the whole family comes together to celebrate. But I think the real test of becoming a man is if you can tackle doing your own laundry. At some point, either you were disrespectful to your mom or your mom gives up, there comes a time when you have to do your own laundry.

I remember learning not to overload the washing machine, why, because the laundry would come out all holey. Not to mix solids with whites because the bleach would take the dye right out of your clothes and put it into the whites. To put in the right amount of bluex in the washing machine or your clothes would come out blue.

Try to dry the whites first before the solids because the whites take up less room and dry quicker. I remember waiting hours to get the white done. And finally try and dry the pants last because they take the longest to dry.

But my laundry duties did not end there. If other people clothes were in the drier I had to move to fold them. If other people’s clothes were in the washing machine I had to move them to the dryer. The best time to wash and dry stuff would be when everybody else had done their washing and drying and had left the machines free for me to do what I pleased. It was great never to get a person yelling from upstairs, “Are you done with your clothes yet?” “Ugh!”

But like I said learning how to take care of your clothes was definitely a huge step on becoming a man because it showed you were ready to accept whatever life would throw at you, like spills, stains, and feces stains. But what really amazed me was cause and effect. If I made a stain my mom no longer got mad at me because I would have to find away to get it out and it was no longer my mom’s job. This worked great the first week of doing laundry, no complaints from my mom and I felt like a man, until I got to that weeks laundry and could not get the stain out. Then all I could hear was my mom laughing.

Honestly, she is not mean, and she did help me get the stains out. I think once you learned how to navigate through the laundry stream you could then move on to washing dishes and cooking food.

I am fine with the washing dishes but still working on the cooking foods gig.