One of Chris' fancy pens exploded in the dryer. He opened the door and found that half of his clothes were splotched by ink, black stains rubbed around the cylinder by the churning of the fabric. It's true that his shirts managed to spread the offending substance around the entire compartment. I felt along the smudges with the pad of my finger. To my relief and Chris' despair, it was all smeary.

"You know what this means?" I asked, excited that it wasn't as grim as it appeared, in terms of far reaching consequences for our future loads of laundry.

"Sitting in the freezing cold garage while scrubbing permanent ink out of the dryer?" he guessed, not nearly as thrilled as I was.

And so, what was initially thought of by me as the ruin of an expensive appliance turned out to be no more complicated to clean up than with a sponge and some sudsy water.

It was cold in the garage though. Portly kept him company while he scrubbed.

Stupid pen.