DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

DOMESTIC DISTURBANCE

I am writing this column as a substitute for mayhem, divorce or spousal revenge.

Two Christmases ago, about 15 months ago, most of our children and grandchildren came to visit. It was a very big gathering. Two days before Christmas the water purifier stopped working.

No big deal.

One day before Christmas a shelf in the refrigerator fell down and refused to be corrected so a lot of shelf space was lost.

No big deal.

Christmas Eve the disposal broke.

No big deal but as you can see a pattern was developing.

Christmas day, the dishwasher broke.

Big Deal!

I began on Christmas Day what would drag out to be 15 months of washing dishes.

My wife, a frugal lass, announced after the kids had departed that two people living alone didn’t really need all those devices and she had no intention of getting any of them repaired.

So Christmas 2011 marked the start of catty-wampus (you have to be a certain age to know what this means…but think of a bald guy wearing his toupee a little off center) shelving in the fridge, all disposal friendly products now taken to the garbage can daily, drinking water out of the tap, and regular washing, by hand, of all dishes.

It was a lot like Outward Bound in our kitchen.

Every family should have a little chance to “rough it” from time to time in our appliance filled society…or so I tried to convince myself.

Magically, sometime in late January the disposal just started to work again. That is when my wife felt safe in telling me that our daughter had put something in the disposal on Christmas that had rendered it unusable. Fortunately for our daughter, she lives in England, which is a pretty big and safe distance across the “pond.”

Sometime around February I brought up the subject of repairs.

I wasn’t brave enough to bring it up again for another six months.

So this Christmas we still were working in a dysfunctional kitchen.

In March 2013 we had a dinner party for ten. As I was toiling away over the sink, with a gazillion dirty dishes, I made my mind up. I am the alpha male in this marriage. I need to “man up” and take a stand.

Truthfully, I had a new weapon. My wife had decided to do some remodeling in a number of the rooms of the house and I was tripping over electricians, painters, dry -wallers, etc. Thousands of dollars in support of renovation but not a dime for good water, clean dishes, or to straighten refrigerator shelves.

Revolution was brewing.

So feeling a little like Colonel Custer at The Little Big Horn, I made my stand. I admit I was afraid the result of my stand might be similar to the result of his little encounter with Sitting Bull.

Darling, I said, you do not have to get the dishwasher repaired but this dish washer is on strike as of tonight. My hands will not spend one more day in dirty dishwater. You want to live like you were born in a covered wagon crossing the plains, that is fine.

But you wash the dishes.

Next day, voila, the local repair people were contacted and scheduled.

Who knew you could get service on three items in 24 hours. And to think…it had taken me 15 months to win the day.

On service day the fine fellow pulls up and asks me what led to the problems. Right then I knew I was in trouble. I am dealing with a serviceman about problems in my wife’s kitchen. I, by choice and family tradition, have never been an authority on anything in the kitchen.

So I mention the dishwasher just won’t work. I was afraid to tell him we had not run it for 15 months for fear he would wonder what kind of nuts wait this long to get help. Anyway, he opens the door and takes a look. Then he bends down and removes a square of dishwasher soap that had lodged under the little piece that rises and lowers to drain and then fill the dishwasher.

He turns her on.

She works.

I am mortified.

I quickly lead him to the refrigerator with a shelf that resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Everything on that shelf is perpetually sliding right to left and piling up on one side.

He reminds me I need to take all that detritus out of the fridge before he can really repair it.

I comply.

He reaches in and pulls the shelf out.

He then puts the shelf back in and makes certain to listen for a little locking sound evidently one is supposed to know about.

Who knew?

Voila!  Shelf is fixed.

By now my repairman is looking at me like I belong in the institution featured in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

I am beyond humiliated.

On to the water filter.

My repairman tells me they do not repair these things. You are just supposed to get a new one. I breathe a sigh of relief.

But then he reaches for the under counter doors, opens them, shines a little flashlight back into the darkness, reaches in and with one turn of his hand he rights one of the two filters. It had been miss-set 15 months ago.

Voila. Pure water.

He cured 15 months of agony in less than 15 minutes.

He departed with a check in his hand, one that I was happy to write and relieved to sign, as well as with a story he will be telling back at the shop, to other customers, and in every bar he frequents for years.

I just hope he doesn’t remember my name.

As for my wife, she just shrugged her shoulders when I told her.

Some days I think permission to berate one’s spouse should have been one of those Commandments Moses brought down from the mountain.

But since he didn’t have water purifiers, dishwashers or a refrigerator it just probably didn’t occur to him.