You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The dishwasher.
What is that sound?
Its water sloshing inside of a box under my sink.
It’s a foreign sound, a primitive sound.
It’s as if I am a caveman experiencing fire for the first time, listening to a churning of soap and suds and mechanized aquatic thunder.
The sound of gurgling inside the sink, swallowing and gulping and spewing forth frothy excess into a sewer hidden somewhere deep under the house.
It’s all so archaic, so primitive.
The top of my counter is vibrating like a sex shop in Denmark.
You think I’m crazy don’t you? You think I’m smoking candle wax again, huh?
Is this the sound of clean?
My mind is racing in the quiet of a Christmas morning.
How much water is this wasting?
In my house, this sound is as foreign as Congress agreeing on Obama Health care legislation.
It’s not Santaria, it’s the dishwasher?
I am a household of one.
I create a mess, I clean the mess.
I have never used the box under the sink.
It would take me 3 weeks of food preparation to fill the box.
I don’t even have enough plates to fill the box. I would have to borrow extra plates from the neighbors, then place them in that thunder box under the sink. That’s how little I eat, and how little I eat at home.
I wash dishes by hand.
I turn on the water at the sink, get a sponge, spritz on a little detergent and in 10 seconds wipe the peanut butter sandwich residue away.
It ain’t brain surgery.
This is what I do, what I have always done.
I wash my dishes, one by one, by hand, in the sink.
I often think, thank God for this sink. I sure would hate to go to the well and cart the water in from the yard.
While you probably think of it as manual labor.
Washing dishes to me is theraputic. It’s a poor man’s day spa.
I let the warm water run over my fingers. I feel the warm gentle caress of the slightly oxygenated water caress my wrists, and it brings a smile to my face.
If this was a street corner, I would reach into my wallet and pull out a $20.
After all, this is instant gratification without any questions asked.
Turn on the water, feel the soothing relaxation of the scrubbing bubbles.
I like washing dishes by hand. I’ll pay you to do your dishes.
But my sister, who is the best gift giver in America sent me the gift that keeps on giving.
New plates and cups and saucers and bowls. They are purple and yellow and orange and blue.
They are freaking fantastic, forged from the ceramic side of a rainbow.
My sister listens, where others only hear me talk.
I was telling her about my plates and she laughed.
When I got divorced, my Ex took all the stuff that makes a home. It’s the stuff I never cared about and still don’t care about. The sheets and pillows and blankets and pots and pans and plates.
So when it came time to eat on day one of my new life, I only had a Bounty paper towel for a plate.
bounty works for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but it’s a bitch when you throw down a glob of mac and cheese.
3 ply quicker picker upper can only be a plate for so long.
So my aunt, feeling sorry for me, took me to the Salvation Army store.
I don’t care, I am not proud, and labels mean as much to me as jock itch on a camel.
I don’t even know what that means.
So I find 5 plates for .99 each.
They are not chipped or cracked. They are blue with some sort of Chinese print.
It looks like something from the Ming Dynasty or at least something I saw in my Grandmother’s pantry once.
I put the plates in my little Salvation Army basket and check out with a Salvation Army smile on my face.
My first single man purchase.
I was proud like an astronaut who just successfully peed into the vacuum of space.
But over time, as I had company over, and I plopped down a perfectly grilled pork chop onto the Ming Dynasty, the talk would always turn to the plates from the Salvation Army.
“So what’s up with the little images of Confucius on your dishes?”
The questions could be so brutal.
“Where’d you get your plates? The Salvation Army?”
Kids can be so mean when they use their mouths.
Soon I grew embarrassed by my Salvation Army plates.
They represented so many things on so many levels.
The plates I didn’t get in the divorce.
The life I was willing to settle for and not grab.
Did I deserve these plates?, thrown away from some Chinese restaurant closed down by the health department for serving cat one too many times?
I started to wonder if the blue chinese pattern was coming off on my food.
I always thought that blue hue on my knife was odd.
Am I eating Salvation Army Chinese lead based paint with my burger?
Hmmmm?
My mind began to race.
I deserve more.
Plates = Life.
But I am stubborn.
I will buy the bar a round of beers, but go into William and Sonoma?
That’s for guys who wear pink underpants.
Give me my Salvation Army lead based paint pork chops and that’s all I need.
It’s often said, I am the Mad Max of flat ware.
I am the road warrior in a waste land of plates and saucers from retail anarchy.
Didn’t Patrick Henry once say “Give me paper plates or give me death!”
Well I am a food patriot, and if I must go to battle with plates from the Salvation Army, then those are the colors I must wear.
And so it has been for 2 years.
But then a magical thing happened.
The power of Christmas and giving selflessly to others knocked on my front door.
UPS dropped a box and a bow on my door step.
The box was so heavy, I thought it was gold bullion from Macy’s.
Christmas Eve I open my magnificent box and like the wise men seeking the Baby Jesus, I see the light.
It is like opening the Ark of the Covenant.
The colors are so bright, they explode into my eyes. The plates are so effervescent, they are like a food canvas wanting to cuddle with a pork chop.
My sister is nothing if not excessive, so where one box would be sufficient, I get 6 boxes.
Apparently she sent me all the colors of the rainbow. She sent me everything but the little Leprechaun and his pot of gold.
Suddenly I have an art studio of plates and saucers and cups and bowls.
I like to wash by hand, but this is going to be a full time occupation.
It’d be easier to dive out of a C-130 in the dead of night and parachute into Osama’s hot tub, than clean a rainbow of plates by hand.
I don’t like touching naked leprechauns either so I decide it’s time to open the box under the sink.
I look under the sink and I see a box entitled CASCADE.
Hmmmm.
Wonder how long that has been there? Probably from the last tenants, I muse.
I pick up the box. It is solid, as if it has crystalized.
I bang the box against the sink and feel a few granules of cascade cleaning action separate from the rest of the frozen moon rock inside the package.
I open the box under the sink and stare at the three holes in the door.
Hmmmmm?
Wonder what the hell all that is about.
I’d have better chance of getting a nuclear submarine to dive than figure out all these indentations in the box under the sink.
I go technical.
Eenie. Meanie. Miney. Mo.
I open the lid and pour some green moon sand into one of the holes.
I shrug and close the door.
Again, I am met with a control panel of options.
On. Off. Heated. Normal Wash. Pots. Pans.
It’s like the glass elevator in the chocolate factory.
“Up to now, I’ve pushed every button, except this one,” the voice in my head says.
“Go ahead Andy. Push it!
I feel the chocolate pulse through my veins and I push a button.
Suddenly the machine under the counter churns to life.
I hear a motor awaken from the crypt of inactivity.
It’s as if a space ship from another world has been dormant under a glacier for an ion. Suddenly the homing beacon has been pushed and it roars to life, melting the ice pack with heat and light and disruptive energy.
I take a step back and stare at the black box under the sink. It is shaking, making more sound than would seem possible from a tiny box loaded with leprechaun dishes.
I run my big toe under the seal of the box at the base of the floor.
I wonder if it is going to blow a gasket and start shooting water and dishwasher oil everywhere?
So far so good.
I sit down and begin to write this story.
My ears are filled with an orchestral thumping of cleansing. I listen to exploding water banging off ceramic dishes trapped inside a plastic water proof box under the sink.
It’s loud and almost soothing. It’s like a rain machine, constantly roaring, drowning out the problems of the day.
Maybe I should run it more? Maybe I could put a cot down on the kitchen floor and sleep next to it.
How relaxing that would be.
Would I dream of pots of gold, or swimming with porpoises?
Would I be transported to the Great Wall of China and throw lead based painted dishes at the centurions of time and take out food?
My Salvation Army dishes are now protected in the magnificent red Macy’s box.
It’s like a burial at sea, a coffin draped with an American Flag from a gigantic retailer.
I say a quick dish prayer and place the Confucius Dishes on a special shelf in the garage.
I hope they enjoy their sleep. One day I will pass them on to my daughter.
Perhaps my wedding present to her.
Oh how she will love them! Much as I have.
Women love dishes from the Salvation Army, do they not?
Oh thanks Salvation Army dishes.
You helped me through a tough time in my life.
And now you are the gateway to the next chapter in what will hopefully be many colorful meals to come.
My pork chop of the future may not realize how good it has it, but I will.
From this point on, every meal with be Leprechaun approved and taste like colorized bursts of love.
And the box under the sink?
Like the monolith in 2001, it too now rests, waiting to send its next message to the Gods.
And that’s crazy™