So, here's the deal:
I have a maid.
I didn't plan to have one, didn't ask for one, and certainly don't need one. She just kinda came with the little one room apartment that I am temporarily renting here in Saigon (a place that my sister has dubbed the "heroin shack" after seeing it in the background during a recent "video chat". Yeah, oddly-placed, distorted background lighting (they LOVE fluorescent bulbs here in Southeast Asia) has a way of making any place seem seedier and creepier than it actually is...).
It's kind of the "norm" here in Saigon: the maid thing.
She comes in every couple of days - my maid. She cleans up my room, washes the few dirty dishes that I have grown accustomed to leaving behind for her in the shared kitchen, (eggs in the morning are STILL the only thing that I actually cook) washes, dries, irons and folds the dirty clothes that I leave in a little hamper that sits just outside my door.
Now, I willingly admit that I have become a bit of a slob since I began traveling almost a year ago. Most times I leave all of my clothes, dirty and clean sitting in one big mixed heap on top of my bed.
It seems to be part of her regular routine - my Vietnamese maid, to organize that heap, folding it and placing it all into one big neat stack, making no distinction between dirty or clean...
Until the other day....
I had come home to an obviously, recently straightened, recently "maid-visited" version of the heroin shack: the smell of bleach and cleaning products still hung heavily in the air; all of the items that had previously been tossed about on the floor were picked up and placed in more appropriate locations and the dirty and clean clothes mixture, as per usual, was folded and stacked in neat, organized piles.
But, wait a minute....
Upon more careful examination I began to suspect that those piles looked a little short - about half of the clothes seemed to be M.I.A....
Now, not for a second did I envision my kind Vietnamese maid stealing my useless worn-out clothing items and, truth be told, I actually found the other, more rational alternative to be much more intriguing and interesting. Just to be sure, I ran upstairs and took a look on the clothes line.
Yep, sure enough, there they were, my now recently washed clothes drying in the hot, humid air...
Now, I realize that none of this is high drama by any means, but the intriguing part to me in all of this was to try and imagine the criteria by which my maid selected the items that she chose to be washed...
I mean, I know the means that I employ when I need to distinguish between my own clean and dirty laundry, but....
Wait just a minute...I wondered... Did my Vietnamese maid, just... just "SMELL-TEST" my dirty laundry!?
I mean there had to be some criteria that she applied to make her choices (fairly accurately I might add, based on the the items that she selected ) Somehow though, I found it hard to imagine this quiet, sweet lady waving my dirty socks in front of her face and sticking her nose into the pits of my T-shirts....
Still, I couldn't imagine there being another means by which to discriminate....
"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -Sherlock Holmes
Yep....
At this point I would say that I am fairly certain that my kind, sweet, middle-aged Vietnamese maid very recently burrowed her snout deeply into the creases and crevices of the most volatile areas of my outer and undergarments, and, aided only by the assistance of her olfactory receptors, she made decisions based on aromas (or lack of) and pheromones present (or not) deep within layers of cloth and fiber as to ascertain the destiny of those garments...
DAMN!
The phrase, "Above and beyond" certainly comes to mind in moments such as these...
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