When I was probably in second or third grade, my dad had just moved to an apartment that had a dishwasher, previous apartment was all hand-wash and I mean like just moved probably within a week or two. And I was there visiting and his girlfriend lived with him at the time A.K.A. soon to-be-fiancé. I can’t remember where they were in their progress there but, my dad was gonna go out and run some errands with my brother and before he left, he turned to my stepmom and said one way or another basically was like, “All right. Heading out. Do not use the dishwasher. We don’t have the right soap for it. You can’t use dish soap. Don’t. Run. The dishwasher.”
So my dad left and almost just like a, like a, was gonna say like a movie but almost like a Curious George book in a way. The minute he left my stepmom was like, “You, you want to try the dishwasher?” And second or third grade me was like, “Yeah let’s see if it works. That sounds fun.” And so we went over to the island where the dishwasher was in the kitchen you had to the walk around the edge and you know dishwashers on the opposite side, from the living room, facing the opposite wall so you can’t see the dishwasher from the television. And she went ahead and made sure that thing was loaded up, put a little bit of dish soap in there and let it loose. And came back over and we watched television for a bit. And then she’s like, “I’m gonna go ahead and uh, I probably should check and see how things are going. Make sure everything’s okay.”
And she went over, around the island to the opposite side to check on the dishwasher. I don’t remember what she said, but there was, she was aghast. Probably something like, “Oh my God,” something very similar. I was like “What?” and I came skittering over. And there were like, bubbles waist high just forming in this very narrow kitchen between the island and the opposite wall. We found out really quickly why you don’t use dish soap in the dishwasher. We had a real problem on our hands. We didn’t panic but my stepmom’s like, “Oh my God, I’m so dead. This is a problem.”
And so we tried to, I think what we did initially is we started literally grabbing the bubbles with our hands and placing them into the sink. But, of course, the sink can only hold a finite amount of bubbles so it’s like, “Well, we need to break the bubbles so turn the sink on.” And so we put the bubbles into the sink, you turn the sink on and then you make more bubbles because of all the soapy bubbles you’re putting in the sink, an even bigger issue was on our hands.
And so, as it turns out, this was one of the first times in my life where I felt like I had made a valuable contribution to an adult problem. I discovered that I could put my finger on, you know, the edge of the faucet, spout, and kind of do that thing you do with the hose to like really spray a hose in a particular direction with a little more energy, put your thumb over the end of it. And we found that doing that would actually actively pop the bubbles without creating more bubbles. And it was a boon for our cleanup experience and so I was the faucet guy and she was the bubble retriever and I have no concept of time for how long it took to rectify that entire situation but, it took some effort.
And again just like a – I remember even thinking back then I was like, “This seems like a plot to a television show.” I don’t know if I even knew what a plot meant back then, but essentially that’s what my brain was thinking because pretty much as soon as we finish and finally sat down back on the couch again, who walks through the door, but my dad and my brother. And if we had wanted to we could have kept that to us forever, I’m not sure if my dad ever would’ve noticed. But it was too wild to not share and admit so my stepmom fessed up and became one of those classic family stories in the long run.