A Dishwasher Took My Place
What this pandemic has done to our happy, dysfunctional, sometimes greasy lives.
“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” Frank Zappa
Before this pandemic came along, I ignored my dishwasher for the better part of three years. Now I fill it like it’s a gaping mouth. Instead of a few plates, there’s eight, instead of a couple of glasses, there’s ten. The silverware, the pots and pans — everything goes in there. It’s like a Grateful Dead concert.
This isn’t a world of modernism or liberalism or conservativism anymore. It’s a world of dishwasher-ism.
The sad—possibly comical—truth is, the dishwasher isn’t a dishwasher anymore. It’s an entry, a porthole to a world of consumer extremes. It’s our world, in other words, the one we’re all realizing is broken. Do we know why it’s broken? My dishwasher does. This isn’t a world of modernism or liberalism or conservativism anymore. It’s a world of dishwasher-ism.
Like our washers and dryers, we don’t think about what we throw in these appliances. We know the capacity, we fill them to capacity. Then we congratulate ourselves on knowing what capacity even means.
It never occurs to us that these conveniences rule us. As long as they work, we don’t care. If a Maytag upright wants to run for president, what’s wrong with that? It’s got a better track record than Donald Trump. He’s a bankrupt narcissist with an overgrown pompadour. Maytags are reliable, dependable appliances.
Dependability and a smooth appearance count for a lot these days.
When people talk about the “new normal,” my dishwasher thinks that’s a hoot. Sure, we can appreciate our family more, work less, recognize the state of our environment. That doesn’t mean we won’t shove everything in that dishwasher like it’s some ravenous Grendal with a taste for china.
And, sure, we’ve seen what a year or so of industrialized inactivity has done. The hole in the Arctic ozone filled, fish and porpoises are returning to the Venitian canals, and mountains can be seen for the first time in years around Katmandu.
Unless a meteor comes along again, we’ll probably starve, too — not just from lack food, but from overall consumerist greed.
All of this should open our eyes — but it won’t. My dishwasher sees this better than most. It understands that we’re on a collision course between convenience and evolution. Dinosaurs died because a meteor came before they starved from overgrazing. Unless a meteor comes along again, we’ll probably starve, too — not just from lack of food, just lack of convenience.
Think back to the anti-lockdown movement in Michigan last year. We heard protestors talk about the infringement of their constitutional rights. Except one placard told the story better than most: “We need haircuts.”
One woman described it as “inhuman” that she couldn’t get her roots done.
What kind of democracy exists where everyday freedoms aren’t respected? Doesn’t the Constitution say, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? Who the hell’s happy with unfrosted hair and toenails that could open a can of tuna?
Again, my dishwasher has to chuckle. As much as we think we control our lives, there’ll be armed riots in the streets, and governors will be dragged from their houses like rabid dogs before our nation’s dishwashers are left empty.
A preacher in Texas talked about tyranny. “We’ve seen this in other countries,” he said. “It’s called dictatorship, and we must rise up, making every state and local government aware that we won’t submit to rules of law that have no basis in our Constitution.”
Well, as even my dishwasher knows, churches support capitalism because capitalism supports them. No denominational congregation would survive without government funding. To suggest anarchy — even in the interest of personal freedoms — is a bit like saying, “I’ll take your money, but I’ll be damned if I let you — or anyone — tells me what I can do with it.”
Our rights and freedoms exist in a framework of duality. What we do affects others, what they do affects us. It works its way down. A restaurant in Castle Rock opened for business on Mother’s Day. It was packed, despite coronavirus numbers increasing daily. The convenience of food supersedes the inconvenience of viruses.
Okay, maybe — just maybe — they risked someone’s life. Then again, the dishes are clean.
In other words, these people exercised their freedoms at the expense of others. No doubt they went home afterward, washed their hands, put on the dishwasher, and felt liberated in the process. Okay, maybe — just maybe — they risked someone’s life. Then again, the dishes were clean.
The day governments tell us to turn off our dishwashers, we’ll realize one immutable truth. Having the right to an opinion is no longer the ultimate freedom. Real freedom is our right to have clean dishes and laundry.
In the state of California, where Governor Newsom tried to get Californians to voluntarily reduce water usage by 15% during the drought, it caught on like a—well, it barely caught on at all. Pushback came from the unlikeliest of places, considering the state is drier than it’s been since the dustbowl 30s.
“The American lawn is sacrosanct,” said Steve Maviglio, a democratic political consultant, “ so any time somebody tells you that you can’t keep it green, there’s going to be pushback, and we’ve seen that before.”
My dishwasher thought that was a hoot. As I tried disentangling two spatulas from the back, it came up with the best slogan for Newsom and all those grass enviers: “Toke it, don’t soak it,” a good mission call, especially when some reservoirs like Lopez Lake look more like puddles.
Well, Newson doesn’t want California to be a “nanny state,” so he’s asking people to take shorter showers, check those sprinkler hoses for leaks, and yes, make sure that dishwasher is packed before turning it on. These are useful suggestions—just not very Californian, considering the state is widely known as a “water hog” by other states like Nevada and Utah.
Besides, this is an election year for Newsom, so he has to tread lightly. Any request that smacks of willfulness, and he’ll be tossed out on his ear like a leaking gasket and labeled a tyrant.
We call it tyranny but let’s face it, we’ve been tyrannized all through this pandemic. Right from the start, we’ve been focused on what we’ve had to give up. And because of that, the top 50 billionaires have made huge profits. Why? Because the very technology we consider essential—including our dishwashers — are only essential because of our dependence.
We see tyranny as a threat to our lifestyles as much as our freedoms. In a way, they’re interchangeable. It’s one thing to restrict our right to assembly, another to realize we’ve got payments on everything we consider essential.
Tightening our belts, for instance, just isn’t American. If anything, we like to let our belts out, and no virus—even a killer like the Delta variant—should threaten our lives and security while there’s a two-for-one special at Denny’s.
Our early lackluster response to the coronavirus reflected a belief that we are masters at curing diseases.
One historian, Margaret McMillan, brought up an interesting point in her Globe and Mail article last year. Our early lackluster response to the coronavirus reflected a belief that we are masters at curing diseases. We cured leprosy, whooping cough, scarlet fever, typhoid, and to a certain extent, polio (starting to emerge again).
If the thought of a pandemic seemed impossible, it’s because we put faith where we shouldn’t have. We figured it was all in good hands, when, in fact, it wasn’t. Even when the coronavirus was being recognized, Republicans were gutting the CDC like it was chicken fat. When death rates soared, Trump turned the problem over to Mike Pence, figuring Pence couldn’t screw it up any worse than it already was.
So what we call tyranny today is really just a bad clean-up effort. Protests follow because pandemics are just too inconvenient. “Nobody asked that ‘rona here in the first place,” one protestor said. And what about this “new normal”? Nobody voted for it, did they? What does it really mean? Are we going to be inconvenienced or liberated?
Well, it might be a bit of both, considering this pandemic only reflects the weaknesses in our present system. We need to do a lot more than we’re doing now — particularly in our daily lives. Consumerism has to change, travel has to change—hell, even dishwashing has to change. We can’t keep looking at the end product, forgetting who suffers in the process.
Put another way, we worry about spots on glasses, but not our prejudices. We never forget to empty the dishwasher, yet we forget family and friends.
We want low oil and gas prices, forgetting what it’s doing to our climate. We want freedom, but we can’t ignore what freedom is in the first place. Without proper medical care, without health, what have we got? I think Kris Kristofferson said it best in his song Me and Bobby McGee: “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Put another way, we worry about spots on glasses, but not our prejudices. We never forget to empty the dishwasher, yet we forget family and friends. We work long hours to buy a new dishwasher, then renovate the kitchen to match.
All these things have to change, starting with the dishwasher itself. If we’re told to stuff it, we’d better stuff it. If we’re told to turn it off—well, we know that’s not gonna happen. It’s too important to shut off.
When I asked my significant other, “Which could you live without? Me or the dishwasher?” she had to think about that—or maybe she didn’t. She was too busy rearranging what I’d already put in the dishwasher. Then I heard the gentle hum, the warmth of the wash cycle starting, and who in their right minds would choose me over that?
I wouldn’t—and I am me.
Robert Cormack is a satirist, novelist and blogger. His first novel “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is available online and at most major bookstores. Check out Robert’s other articles and short stories at robertcormack.net
