What in the world did cavemen do before the dishwasher was invented? Their stone bowls likely stacked up in the sinks, and bones must have been strewn about in disarray. How uncivilized!
Nothing like us modern-day appliance addicts. And while I’ve always thought of myself as a relatively simple guy, I learned a bit about my dependence to this one modern convenience last week when ours came down with a case of the intestinal death.
The motor went to the great junkyard in the sky where it is now drinking pia coladas and laughing at me. In dishwasher heaven you use all the cups and plates you want and humans have to wash them.
I always thought of dishwashers as rather silly devices. To me they were made for people who were either incredibly lazy, or just terrified of suds. Do we really need them? Would life be so bad without them?
After a week of waiting for the new motor to arrive and the repairman to come install it, I can tell you that I have seen life without dishwashers and that life doth sucketh!
Oh, sure. We COULD survive without them, but what kind of world would that be? I have dishpan hands and permanent pruning. I can’t live like this!
Everything piles up, there’s no place to put stuff to dry and, to be quite frank, we’re terrible hand-washers in my house. I found a plate the other day with a bit of food stuck on it the size of a bowling ball. It looked like it was growing a tumor.
Forks looked like they were sprouting extra tines. One plate wasn’t even a plate, but rather a big, congealed glob of gunk that had dried and been mistakenly stacked in the pantry with the other china.
So it’s been tough … very tough. The motor’s death came without warning. No indication it was un-well whatsoever. It never complained or asked for a day off to rest. It was a trooper to the last breath. We turned it on one night and noticed a noise coming from it that sounded like an old man who wasn’t getting along with his chili.
It kind of groaned and sputtered, and I feared maybe there was something jammed in a key mechanism, like possibly a squirrel.
We shifted things around, tried again and a new noise emerged, this one sounding like a pained electrical humming — the kind you usually hear right before something bursts into flames and starts spitting out bolts of lighting.
I took this as a good sign to shut the operation down. And also as a good sign to break out the screwdriver to poke around in there. Funny how one minute you’re fearing a major explosion and the next you’re sticking a metal object into a water-filled device that is most definitely still electrified. It’s a wonder the human race made it this far.
A dishwasher, I found, is an interesting place. When you get into some of its nether regions, you are re-acquainted with all manner of “things” that were parts of meals weeks, or even months ago. None of it is recognizable, and none of it makes you want to ever eat food again. There’s not a lot of it — just a stray remnant here or there. But up close it looks like something out of a horror movie, and it seems ready to attack you.
I ran from the kitchen screaming, “the chicken skin is after me!”
I quickly realized I couldn’t help my machine and began dousing myself in rubbing alcohol.
So we called the repairman and began life anew without our dishwasher. It was a tough week — one that made us realize we’re slaves to at least this one kitchen appliance. But that’s just fine by me as my hands are silky-smooth again, and we’re not finding dried modern art on our plates anymore.