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Clean
Up,
To say the word ‘cleaning is not in my vocabulary is a gross
understatement. Its
breadth and scope go so much farther than that.
It goes back so many generations that I think there is a
messiness gene that is carried on the ‘x‘ chromosome.
To wit: my son is a slob, I am a slob, my father was a slob,
his mother was a slob, and her father was a slob.
It seems to be passed on from father to daughter and mother to
son for all eternity. It
looks like my progeny and I are to be cursed for perpetuity to live in
swill and utter disorder. But
that doesn’t mean we don’t occasionally try, albeit in vain, to be
neat.
Way back, when getting a new pair of Keds or PF Flyers were the
first sign of incipient spring, and the second sign was commercials
for Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy, my dad was forced to clean the garage.
It was a new way of thinking for us, since we had recently
moved from a housing project in New York City.
In fact, trees were a new thing for us too, (well, me anyway).
We had moved ten miles west to the wild and woolly suburbs of
New Jersey. We had
sidewalks, sewers, gutters, and dense housing with tiny lawns, but I
was sure that I was gonna see cows at every turn.
My ignorance of life outside of the city had actually won me a
contest the previous year. There
was a citywide art contest for kids sponsored by the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (I think). My
painting won first prize because of its content.
Having never seen a forest, I painted one complete with pine
trees, squirrels, a yellow curb and fire hydrant, and a taxi in the
background. Who knew?
I had never been west of the Hudson River (except for going to
Palisades Amusement Park), and the only nature I had seen (besides
Mark Eidlerman’s wee-wee) was at a day camp amidst the subdivisions
on Staten Island. But I
digress.
We had a garage that was attached to the house, although you
couldn’t get into it from the house.
But they did share a common wall.
For some reason, the garage had come with real knotty pine
paneling. Dad was very
proud of it, as if he, personally had given birth to it (ouch, the
splinters). But like all
garages, it was used for cars and old stuff.
Stuff like defunct vacuum cleaners, old cribs, holey buckets,
old PF Flyers, old pieces of half-chewed Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy, and
eventually tree toads. The
tree toads were my doing. I
was so smitten with ‘country living’ and the fact that there was
wildlife beyond ants, roaches, water beetles and rats, that when I
discovered tree toads in our local park, I took them home as pets.
Mom had said that three kids were pets enough, so I had to hide
them. The back of our
garage was so crowded with junk, that only a small body could get
through. It was the
perfect place for my tree toads.
And luckily, I had found an old, porcelain-lined bucket back
there. It was kind of
rusted through in a few places, but I didn’t think the tree toads
would mind. So I happily
collected them all summer, feeding them and keeping them wet and
alive, until their ranks swelled to 17 in number.
The day I realized a few had escaped was the day my mom found
my little brother trying to eat one that was jumping around the dining
room. Apparently they had
gotten out through one of the holes in the bucket and found their way
into our house via the holes in the knotty pine paneling.
I was forced to confess, and my parents weren’t even too mad.
But they realized they would have to clean out the house and
the garage to find all the tree toads before they died in the walls
and began to rot. Thus
began “The Big Cleanup.”
Dad was a gung-ho sort of guy, so to him, cleaning up meant
cleaning everything.
I was told to clean the bathroom, but I needed remedial
scrubbing lessons since I had never seen it done before.
I had dutifully smeared the dirt around the counters, collected
the dust bunnies from the corners, washed them off and put them back,
and then called my mom to come and see.
She was very upset with me.
It wasn’t just that the wet dust bunnies had lost their
shapes, it was the fill lines in the toilet and on the bathtub.
Fill lines, you say?
Well, in my slovenly ignorance, I thought that the brown lines
in the toilet and on the tub were the high water marks, above which
things would overflow. So
I carefully left them there. Boy,
was mom mad. When she
told me I was brought up to know better, I brightly and cheerfully
contradicted her. She
began yelling and crying, and dad came over and they got into a fight
and I thought it was all my fault.
After all, if I hadn’t hidden the tree toads in the garage,
we wouldn’t have to clean the house and they wouldn’t be fighting.
I think it was that incident that permanently traumatized me to
cleaning house.
Ever since then, I have blithely gone along living in a messy
place, and when the dirt and garbage get too high, I move.
(I got the idea from Lewis Carroll’s Mad Tea Party in Alice
in Wonderland, a book that has been my role model for coping with
the world.) It’s been a method that has served me well.
Until last night.
While cleaning the house may be anathema to me, I cannot afford
to throw out dirty dishes. However,
washing dishes is tantamount to cleaning and so I try to avoid it.
Which is why, I think, I have a son, formally known as Sir
Stinkyfeet. Whenever he
transgresses, which is frequently (being a teenager), I punish him by
making him do the dishes. Although
this system doesn’t please him, it has suited me perfectly.
However, the little creep has gone out of his way to be
disgustingly obedient recently and so we have been reduced to using
paper plates since the dishes haven’t been done in eons.
Up until yesterday. He
used the ‘F’ and ’S’ words to me; that is, he used the words
‘Food Shopping’. I
nearly lost it. How could
I go food shopping if the counters were covered with dirty dishes?
I guess he was tired of eating toaster crumbs and dog bowl
leavin’s so he decided to do the dishes.
How can a kid who remembers every word to every episode of
“Son of the Beach” forget how to do the dishes?
It must be something in the Laffy Taffy.
Anyway, Sir Stinkyfeet forgot how to do the dishes.
He squirted around the dish washing liquid until everything was
covered in it. Then he
turned on the water full blast. I
was in the next room blissfully watching TV when I thought I saw
little bubbles floating across the screen.
Since I hadn’t been doing any Nyquil shooters, I figured
there must really be little green bubbles floating around.
Just as I was going to get up to investigate, the smoke alarm
went off. Our dog Butchie,
also known as The-Beast -Who-Can-Poop-In-5-Languages, tried to hide
himself in the cracks of the sofa.
Since this was impossible, he did the next best thing and tore
up the throw pillows, trying to hide under the settling bits of foam
rubber.
Our apartment, which had at least six months of living and
messing before we had to move, was now ankle deep in debris mixed with
tiny bubbles (and there was no sign of Don Ho).
Meanwhile, the smoke detector blared on, while the house
smelled eerily clean. Maybe
I was having nasal hallucinations, but I could have sworn that I
smelled evidence of someone having committed a neatness.
I lurched and skidded my way into the kitchen to find Sir
Stinky Feet desperately looking for a fire.
Common sense took over and I asked him if he’d been cooking
anything. When he replied
in the negative, I checked to see if any appliances were plugged in.
They were not. Nor
were any lights on. The
only activity going on in the kitchen was dishwashing and that damned
noisy smoke detector. I
suggested we try feeling the walls and floors for heat, but again,
nothing. Sir Stinky Feet
was sure there was a fire and was about to call the Fire Department
when I stopped him.
Patiently I explained to him that the house was too messy to
call the Fire Department and that by the time we got it clean enough,
if there was a fire, it would have burned down anyway.
Instead, I removed the battery from the smoke detector and took
everything into the bathroom. We
normally keep the door to the bathroom closed, and so it had no soap
bubbles in the air and no aroma of Palmolive Dishwashing Liquid.
When I restored the batteries, the smoke detector was
wonderfully silent. As
soon as I stepped out into a bubble zone, it went off again.
Well, it didn’t take a brunette to figure out what was going
on. The dishwashing
liquid set off the smoke detector.
Sir Stinky Feet was sure I’d been inhaling the mold off the
old cheese in the refrigerator again.
However, I told him that we would know the truth within two
days. Either the house
would have burned down or we’d have to wash the dishes again and the
same thing would happen. In
actuality, it took three days (we ate off of paper towels for a while
until we found out that it doesn’t make a good bowl for cereal and
milk). Then I blackmailed
Stinky into doing the dishes again.
Sure enough, the smoke detector went off, the dog destroyed
some more pillows, and I was vindicated. Stinky took it as a direct sign from The Almighty that he was not meant to wash anything beyond his own hairy body. The dog took it as a signal that it was acceptable to tear into the cushions. And I took it as proof that cleaning was hazardous to my ears. So as of this writing, I have every piece of crockery, cutlery, and cookware sitting out on our counter in a state of filth. I am testing the theory that, in a pinch, one can eat off of aluminum foil, and drinking cereal and milk out of a paper cup isn’t half bad. © Beth Goodtree |
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