Lary Bloom photo
It’s designed to accommodate dirty dishes but not human behinds.
It’s a story, I would guess, you’ve heard a thousand times, about old people falling. But this tale I offer today has a twist; indeed, a twist and a backward flip.
As a courtesy to the perpetrator of this embarrassing event, however, I won’t identify him here, though in fairness to the readers I will offer a hint.
The man who performed this stunt so unwillingly and awkwardly lives in East Rock, has a dog called Lucca, has written often about life in New Haven, and generally goes by the name that you will find in the byline above. Beyond that, you’ll just have to guess who it was who performed a kitchen tumble in such bizarre fashion.
It was just last weekend when he set about to cut a peach for the morning’s ration of Wheatabix. And, in doing it, he had no particular worry.
After all, he was aware of no reference to the perils of peach-cutting other than the one relating to fingers injured because of carelessness with knives. This is something he had no concerns about, as he was always careful to follow the guideline: Sharpen Your Kitchen Knives Only Once Every Decade.
Besides, there was no warning on the internet that explicitly said, “Be careful while slicing a peach, which though it surely perks up Wheatabix — pretty tasteless stuff, as the breakfast “food” has almost no sugar or sodium.”
This is because the action might cause you to perform the unthinkable: slip on the area rug, lose your balance, and fall backwards into the dishwasher you forgot to close.
“Such a cataclysm,” the missing warning goes on, “will bruise your ass and your ego and leave you immobilized so that there is a generous interval between your graceless landing on the inside of the dishwasher and the ability to remove your rear end from that spot and pretend the rest of the day that all is well.”
Even so, after a few days of thinking about it, and then mentioning it to a friend over a dinner at Caffe Bravo and watching her go into hysterics (and thereby offered limited sympathy), he decided it was necessary to document the incident as a public service, in the New Haven Independent.
Of course, more research had to be done, and at least five minutes were spent in this vital pursuit. When he called medical authorities, he learned that while many seniors have suffered injuries while playing pickleball, there are no confirmed cases of geezers wounded by open dishwashers. They hadn’t even heard of such a thing. So the question naturally arose among Yale scholars, “When is a thing a thing? Or, conversely, when is a thing not a thing?” (More on that, perhaps, in another piece.)
Even so, the victim, obviously still shaken by what happened, considered calling his state rep to introduce a bill in the Connecticut legislature that would make it illegal for seniors to open a dishwasher because of what that infernal machine can do to posteriors.
He recognized, however, that this may cause people his age to wonder what use a dishwasher would be if it can’t be opened, and dirty dishes can’t be put inside, or clean ones removed. “You have a point there,” he said, when questioned by his wife.
All right already. I know there are many astute readers of the NHI, so I’m thinking you’ve already correctly guessed that the victim of fate in this case was yours truly.
And I hope you’ll forgive me for trying to hide my identity, as I did when I was a kid and threw a stone at a passing car, thinking it was funny and harmless until the driver stopped his 1953 Chevy coupe and, as he knocked on the door of my aunt Dora’s house to offer his testimony, referred to me as a juvenile delinquent for cracking his driver’s window.
All I can do in my defense is offer a couple of endnotes to this tale.
I searched the owner’s manual that came with the dishwasher to see if the manufacturer offered a warrantee against any damage done by a human derriere. To my astonishment, there was no reference to this possibility.
And yet, as so often happens, there can be a happy ending to even such a gruesome tale.
The morning after the misfortune, I opened a drawer in the kitchen and found the rest of the peach I had started to cut. And, voila, I was able to slice it up without having to call the EMTs. And Wheatabix biscuits were transformed once again.
Moreover, I decided that I may write a self-help book, “How to Stay Out of the Dishwasher.” A useful guide, and business plan, I think you’d agree. Proving again what I always teach my writing students: “For civilians, misfortune is lamentable. To writers, misfortune is tax-deductible.”