THE DEATH AND REBIRTH OF A DISHWASHER My husband believes that if you purchase an appliance for your home, that appliance is BRAND NEW for the first 10 years of its life and PRACTICALLY BRAND NEW for the next 10 years. Thus when our 8-year-old dishwasher wouldnt start yesterday morning, Robert reacted with a sense of deep betrayal. He turned to me and spoke as if he were Richard Burton in Camelot mourning the collapse of his glorious Round Table: There was once a time when major appliances outlived people. I wasnt certain why lying on his death bed knowing his dishwasher would survive him seemed so great to Robert -- I personally am far more comforted by the thought my children will live on after me and really dont care what happens to my electric can opener after I die -- but Robert had more to say: And if something DID break after thirty or forty years, you could fix it yourself with a little duct tape or a can of WD 40. This led me to remember the time Robert duct taped our garage door spring and when he tried to demonstrate to me how perfect his repair job was, the garage door crashed down and one of our cats narrowly escaped decapitation. I hate our dishwasher. It was the cheapest scratch & dent sale model at Home Depot. The salesman tried to warn us: Its not super quiet, which turned out to be code for If a jet takes off in your kitchen and the dishwasher is on, you wont be able to hear the jet. Also, our dishwasher has never gotten dishes clean. Robert blames me for this. He points out if I washed the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, everything would be FINE. So maybe I should go buy a new dishwasher today? I asked Robert as he stood sadly staring at our dead dishwasher. Robert sighed one of those My life is a living Hell and all anyone in my family wants to do is spend money sighs. I guess, he said. He walked out the door a broken man who would have to outlive his dishwasher. I opened up the dishwasher and glanced at the soap dish -- which was stuck closed. Vaguely remembering Roberts Camelot spiel, I went and got some WD 40 and put a few drops on the side of the soap dish. The thing sprang open. I added some Cascade, closed it and turned on the dishwasher. And it worked. I stood in the kitchen listening to the DEAFENING ROAR of the dishwasher coming to horrible life like Frankensteins monster. I ran and got the phone and stood outside on the deck -- you cant speak indoors when my dishwasher is on -- and called Robert to report to him that his beloved WD 40 had actually worked. And his voice, so sad and broken at home, was full of ecstatic joy at the news our dishwasher might just outlive us after all.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 16:16:11 +0000
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