LETTER: Big Men Washing Dishes (For Adults Only)

Lester Simon

Big Men Washing Dishes (For Adults Only)

1. I grew up with my maternal grandmother for most of my pre-teenage life. Some of the good things I remember from growing up included going to the village shop, and converting pounds, shillings and pence to dollars and cents.

2. Some of the things I hated included hanging out clothes on bramble or on the clothesline. I once went to the shop with a clothespin pinned to the collar of my shirt. I also loathed carrying out our goats and taking them back home. I ended up disliking the Yuletide song, “While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground”. I kept waiting in vain for the angels of the Lord to come down and rescue me from that mighty dread.

3. My greatest disdain was washing dishes. However, many years later I slowly came to the conclusion that washing dishes taught me one of my most important life lessons. I had to ensure I had all the dirty dishes before I started. Once I got going, I didn’t like being interrupted during the dish-washing process. This meant sometimes I had to wait a while before I started, keeping an eye on the slow and late eaters; and I had to learnt to be tolerant.

4. I separated the wares according to type and amongst each type I had subtypes based on dirtiness. Subconsciously, in time I learned to categorize people along a spectrum from one extreme to the next. Put then in various folders and innumerable subfolders.

5. Keep the knives away from everything else. The forks and spoons can be together with handles in parallel alignment. Glasses and cups can go together but glasses have priority. Some of my friends are not and should not be friends with my other friends. They wonder why I talk to and mix with those others. Everyone has their usefulness and uselessness. They were either born that way or they come to function that way.

6. Washing glasses can be a slippery and difficult task. You deliberately have to wash around the rim firmly but carefully many times with a clean dishcloth and untainted dishwashing liquid, lest, even days after, when anyone drinks a glass of water, the smell of raw fish will still be there. The smell of raw fish on a glass of drinking water is called “raish”, an Antigua and Barbudan monosyllabic term probably derived from the adjective, “raw-ish” from raw fish. But I will accept any other etymology and spelling.

7. I must wash and watch my mouth and brush my teeth and scrape my tongue very well. The things I say to people may be awful and “raish” if I don’t filter the wild things that come into my big uncultured head. However, unfiltered thoughts, words and actions, like unwashed utensils, sometimes can be useful and even deliberately funny. Many decades ago, after seeing and chatting up a classy, glassy, fine young maiden on campus for some weeks, she finally invited me to her room on the third floor of her dormitory.

8. During a lull in our conversation I made a soft, gentle, meek and mild attempt to touch her. I had barely, hardly, put my hands or fingers or anything else on her anatomy when she said she would jump out the window if I touched her. Without thinking or filtering or dish-washing my unbridled thoughts I stopped, closed the window and calmly said to her that if I were to touch her, she would indeed jump out the closed window. She thought I was very funny and laughed. I thought about how carefully I should handle and wash this feminine glassware and fragile enamel cup for drinking myriad liquids, from room temperature water to cups of teas and soups. A few years later she changed her tune, and we changed her name.

9. Dirty pots and pans were always left for last. Some demanded massive scrubbing. Bits of stubborn food often required soaking overnight unless I had enough steel wool to manage them. This is why I tried to eat every last bit of my share of food and would often clean out the tasty bottom of the pot with my hungry spoon, fingers and tongue.

10. From washing dishes and taking them from being dirty to clean, drying them, and putting them away, you can come to realize that a good life partner can be the very opposite of what you are, as you two work in concert. Jack Sprat could eat no fat and his wife could eat no lean; so, between them both they licked the platter clean. He ate only what he liked and so did she. Washing-up 101 made easy. There is a dirty latent joke here, but I will leave it unwashed lest you jump out of the closed window of your mind.

11. Because I tried or was encouraged to be good at whatever I did, it was often my unequal chore to do the dishes. I had time to think during wash-up, even with due rapt attention to the task at hand. As my thoughts wandered, I wondered as a child while washing up what would become of me. “Que Sera, Sera”.

12. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: If you become too fixated on what you want to be you will become it; and that will be your punishment. On the other hand, if you live a dynamic, artistic life, you can become anything, and that is your reward.

13. As useful as this life prescription may be, I posit that you have to have a range of plasticity outside of which you should not venture for more adventures. You should know your poisons. I recall rebuking a fallen childhood friend, telling him, a fine trumpet player then, that he should have been satisfied with ganja alone, and not fly too close to the cocaine sun. I should have been more gentle with him for “stinging” me with the reminder of how fragile we are.

14. Maybe the best lesson men can learn from washing dishes is how to wash ourselves. How to prepare, where to start, what to use, where to end, what not to miss.

15. I am reliably informed by some women that many men do not know how to bathe properly. They do not use a wash rag to clean their ears, if they use a rag, or their boxers as a rag, at all. They do not wash their feet well, and worse, they ignore between their fungal toes altogether. Their toenails demand lawn shears, and their fingernails beg to be catered for, like those of a violin player. “What Game Shall We Play Today”, an exquisite tune by Chick Corea and his group, Return To Forever, is unknown to them and surely and sorely (ouch!) they will not return; forever, to her. But worst of all, they barely wash their bottom.

16. Reportedly, some men fear if they wash their whole bottom properly, including washing well with a rag, the whole of their arsehole, they might be fingered (fingered!?) as being homosexual! What a pitiful, nonsensical excuse for not bathing properly. Jack Sprat and his wife, and the platter, will be sadly unfulfilled.

17. Yes. Don’t you agree? Big men should wash the dishes.

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