"Plate Expectations"

By Jerry Zezima

I may not be the chief cook in my house (that would be my wife, Sue, without whom I would have starved to death long ago), but I am the chief bottle washer.

And I don’t wash only bottles. I also clean glasses, mugs, cups, saucers, bowls, plates, pots, pans, tongs, whisks, spatulas, ladles, forks, knives, spoons and, most important, ice cream scoops.

And I have the dishpan hands to prove it.

But help has arrived: We just got a new bottom rack for our dishwasher.

We needed it because, for many months, it was the best of tines, it was the worst of tines.

I refer to the plastic spikes that hold dishes so they don’t collapse, forcing the chief bottle washer to clean them himself and end up with hands rougher than the hide of a geriatric crocodile with a severe case of eczema — which, perhaps not coincidentally, rhymes with Zezima.

The problem was that the tines in the back of the bottom rack would keel over every time I tried to put a bowl between them. That’s because the clips that held the tines had fallen off and couldn’t be snapped back into place without the use of a jackhammer, which probably would have broken the bowls, sent knives flying past my head and destroyed the entire dishwasher.

So I had to settle for getting almost no use out of that side of the bottom rack and running the recalcitrant appliance so often that the water bill rivaled the gross national product of Finland.

This raised three questions:

1) How much would a new dishwasher cost?

2) How could two people go through so many dishes each day?

3) How come I don’t wear rubber gloves so my hands won’t become chapped, waterlogged or a deadly combination that prevents me from feeding myself?

The answer to the first question: Way too much.

The answer to the second question: Who knows? Neither of us is a glutton, although Sue’s cooking is superb, so maybe our cups and saucers are engaging in extracurricular activities and multiplying overnight in the dishwasher, leading to this shocking headline:

THE DISH ON SCANDAL

Steamy doings have hapless hubby in hot water

The answer to the third question: Because I’m too stupid to protect my hands so a daily deluge won’t rot them to the bone.

Other dishwashing dilemmas include the question of whether knives and forks should be put up or down in the cutlery basket. It’s like whether toilet paper should go over the top or under the bottom of the roller or whether the toilet seat should be up or down.

Even with all that’s going on in the world, these are among the most important issues facing a married couple, especially if the lesser half happens to be yours truly.

On that note, there is the conundrum about loading and unloading the dishwasher and whether, as is often claimed by the better half of a married couple, no man knows how to do either one properly.

The former because he can’t economize when arranging glasses and mugs on the top or bowls and plates on the bottom; the latter because he likely doesn’t know, even after decades of living in the house, where anything goes.

So Sue, tired of listening to me curse up a storm at a maddening contraption, ordered a new bottom rack.

She called the manufacturer and got the best deal possible: It was free.

The rack arrived a few days later and has ensured peace in the kitchen. Now I can put bowls between the tines without suffering an attack of apoplexy.

Next up: Buying a pair of rubber gloves. Then I’ll really be a hands-on bottle washer.

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima