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Okay, seriously, now. Does anyone know any actual Buddhist monks? I want to try an experiment with this Bosch dishwasher.
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So I had a crazy thought that Anita might be on to something with this whole Bosch thing.
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For those of you on Twitter, freaking out right now, don’t worry about who Anita is. It isn’t important, right now.
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Her Buddhist monk, Anita’s, that is, sang. Not like he gave people up to the feds or anything, but he sang. As in songs.
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Also, I don’t mean to imply that Anita owns a Buddhist monk. She was renting, of course. You can only buy Trappist monks.
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Now I fancy myself a bit of a songster. I am perhaps the only person with ears who considers myself this, but it’s someone.
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What if I could tame the beast (the number of this particular beast is SHE3AR55UC) with song?
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You’ve all heard my saga, what harm, right? Right?
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So this evening I performed all my usual prep.
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I put the children to bed and closed the soundproof door to their wing.
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I poured a half gallon of bleach into the Bosch dishwasher and ran it.
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When that was over I poured a half gallon of white vinegar into the dishwasher and ran it.
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I burned a small pile of incense. Didn’t actually have any incense on hand, so burned a plant we’d been growing on the kitchen sill.
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I don’t know that we were growing it intentionally, anyway.
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I said a small prayer to a vague enough god that at least one of them, should they be listening, might consider it meant for them.
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I put on a long, flowing robe, which is what I do when I sing. Or what I do when I’m getting ready to sing.
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I started to shave my head, got a look from my wife which I took to mean I should stop shaving my head, so I did.
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Her next look I took to mean that before I went back to the kitchen I should clean up the hair from the floor of the bathroom. So I did.
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I stood before the dishwasher in the light of a single, solitary candle flame with my half-shaven head.
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I rested the candle on top of the counter, above the dishwasher, amongst the stains of burnt plant. Can’t sing with things in my hands.
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One of the kids came in. Needed a glass of water. Got it for them. Gave them the look they were giving me back. Sent them to bed.
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Knelt before the dishwasher.
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The floor was kind of dirty, thought better of it, returned to my feet.
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I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Caught my reflection in the glass, saw that I resembled a half-shorn fish.
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Collected myself. Began to sing. Sang like I’d never sung before! Loud and ringing!
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It was a Def Leppard song, which I realize may have been my mistake.
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Three, maybe four notes in, the dishwasher began making honking noises.
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Not like a goose, but like a truck.
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There was a great tearing sound from beneath the dishwasher, and jets of tepid, food particle-filled water gushed forth.
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I wasn’t going to be able to return the robes to the robe rental store.
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The dishwasher lurched forward through the spray, clanking down onto the floor, crushing a finger I probably shouldn’t have left there.
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I yelped, as you do when a dishwasher crushes your finger, and attempted to crawl away.
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The dishwasher on my finger made this difficult, of course.
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As the dishwasher rolled to one side to continue its approach, my flattened finger was freed, so I scrambled backwards.
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Of course, our kitchen is rather small, so I scrambled pretty much in place.
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The dishwasher door swung open and a deep, offensive blast of air hit me. It stank of the last seven nights of dinner. Or so.
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I instantly wished we’d used more parsley.
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I was stunned into silence. Of course, I’d stopped singing a while ago, but my singing and screaming may have sounded similar.
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The fetid roar of the dishwasher reverberated throughout the house like a sewer ‘gator stubbing its toe in the stinking depths.
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Only imagine the alligator had a megaphone and had also just been chewing on some dinner plates.
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When the roar subsided, so did the dishwasher.
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Opened my eyes, because, it turns out, a natural human reaction to being attacked by a Bosch is to close your eyes & cower a little bit.
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It sat there, grim, like only a pissed off dishwasher can. The floor was slick with detritus and soapy water.
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The little red ‘Clean’ light was illuminated.
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A wombat, the sink, and how it got there
