Oh, are you doing laundry?

When I was eight or nine, one day, I went to visit one of my childhood best friends at her house. At the time, we no longer lived close to each other, so every occasion we got to play together was precious.

That day, after some time, we started playing at the bathroom sink. We made a pool of water and put a lot of soap in it. To our excitement, the water became really bubbly like a bubble bath we would see in a movie. As we both manipulated bubbles in our hands, we gave names to them: bubbly bubble group 1 and bubbly bubble group 2. Then these groups of bubbles started to talk to each other about their life as bubbles.

We got absorbed in this world of bubbles, laughing and talking on behalf of the bubbles. Hearing our bubbly voices, my friend’s mother once came in to see what we were doing.

“You girls seem to be having a lot of fun!” she said to us, smiling. Then, looking at the bubbles in the sink, her face lit up even more. “Oh, are you girls doing laundry?”

Laundry?” my friend and I looked at each other puzzled. But my friend’s mother continued delightfully.

“Then, could you also wash these, please?”

In her hand were a few pairs of dirty socks.

“Oh…” We were too surprised to say anything. But looking at my friend’s mother’s happy face, we accepted the socks into our bubbly bubbles in the sink.

“Thank you so much!” my friend’s mother said with a beaming smile. “Now continue your laundry!”

After she left, my friend and I looked at each other and burst into laughter. It was funny that our world of bubbly bubbles was mistaken for laundry.

“Did we really look like we were doing laundry?”

Once we washed the socks in the bubbles, however, the bubbles lost their perfection, and we decided that it was time for us to move on to our next activity.