I recently changed laundromats, and I find myself fascinated with the personality each one holds.

The character of the old one spurs descriptors such as “ghetto” and “prole.” Tiles line the floor - in a muted shade of 1973. I once heard two women there talking about a mutual acquaintance as a “rat-trap ho.”

The manager there enjoys a Fonzie-style relationship with the machines: It is common for him to offer a little jab to greedy washers whose doors refuse to open. When not reuniting wet clothes and their owners, he walks around with a cigarette dangling from his mouth (despite the emphatic sign: Please no smoking in front of driers thank you mgmt). He talks with his favorite patrons, casually slinging platitudes in his thread-bare tank top.

It sounds awful, but I patronized that laundromat, in its chunky brown strip mall with a labor-ready work-by-the-hour office and and a foam cushion outlet, for 18 months.

Halfway across town, the new-to-me laundromat survives on an anemic crew. Two of every three washers and driers bear “out of order” signs, insistently written in Sharpie and taped to their Plexiglas faces. Even the change and soda machines have notes introducing themselves: For patrons only; Please do not put taped bills in machine - thanx mgmt; Please do not put dimes or nickels in soda machine it jams thank you; Quarters only.

The TV, mounted in an upper corner of the room, bears the verboten warning “DO-NOT-CHANGE-TV.” On it, a cavalcade of John Wayne movies and Mr. Ed episodes wanly offers background entertainment.

This one sits almost invisibly in a low-lying strip of stores. I drove past it dozens of times before the sign jumped into my attention.

The old woman who manages the new one has the charm of Mussolini. On my first trip there, I held up a $10 bill for her and asked for change. “Where’s your laundry?” Apparently burned by the rash of ungrates who get change and go elsewhere with the cloths, she made me bring in my laundry from the car before she pointed me to the change machine I hadn’t seen tucked away in a corner.

The contrast is startling - to me anyway. Laundromats are not exclusively American. Still, I’m amused at the shades of America found in them.

(Ed. note: This essay was written earlier this fall. What can I say? I’ve been busy.)

I’m an easy-going guy. But, the one thing I don’t deal with well is being told “because” as a reason.

Flying out of Detroit Monday, security agents asked me to remove my shoes. Okay, no problem; I did. I asked first, “Is this really necessary?” Yes, I was told. Everyone has to remove their shoes, she told me.

Here’s where my problem comes in: I’ve flown to and from a half dozen destinations this year, and no other airport asks me to remove my shoes. Orlando International, my usual origin, does ask people to remove some shoes, but I’ve been waved through at that airport each time. “Oh, those don’t set off the detectors,” they’ve told me, gesturing to my canvas All Stars.

I’ve been to Houston and Washington, DC, this year, and gotten the same treatment. If I can fly into the nation’s capitol wearing my Converse, that tells me these shoes fit into the “safe” category. So, I wear them I fly.

In fact, I asked Transportation Security Administration officials on trips last year about this specific issue. In that instance, security asked me to remove my Doc Martins. Combat boots have steel rods in their soles, they said. Except, of course, Doc Martins. If they did, I wouldn’t be able to bend the sole like I can. As the agent ran my boots through the X-ray, I asked. Nope, no steel rods in there.

Still, being both easy-going and reasonable, I can see how TSA agents might widely believe that combat-boot style shoes set off metal detectors. Many of them do.

But, canvas Chuck Taylors?

I know that the TSA is keen to prevent the next Richard Reid from boarding a plane. That’s their job, and I hope they do it well. All I ask is to know what to expect, and for the TSA to use a little consistency.