4& ~ Wednesday, January 12, 1994 - North Shore News . household in harmony: family bonding during the rinse cycle THE OLD dishwasher had been dead for months. Phave this crazy philosophy that you should run any machine you buy into the ground before giving the manufacturing industry another teason 10 gobble up more FesoUrces, Keep appliances together with gine. if you have to, Tsay. The Fourth "R": repair. Once a gizmo is kaput, however, it's perfectly OK to go pul) another one aff the shelf. Unnecessary suf- fering is tacky, 1 believe. Unfortunately, the dishwasher decided to pack it in ata bad time. ft was competing with a ransom payment (o the government in taxes, so we decided 10 do without for a while. To make it bearable, we pre- tended to ourselves that washing dishes by hand was actually good for us. Sort of an organic thing, like growing your own spices. We'd share the work, fsn'C that cute? It would be a “doing-things- together” thing. Husband- wife stuff, Equality in suffering. By the time we finished repro- gramming oursclves, doing dishes by hand had become a return to old-fashioned values, like going back to a pre-television world, hand in detergent-slicked hand. Wis faintly possible that our souls bonded at some deeper level than ever before because we were washing the dishes by hand togeth- er, Bui it was also boring as hell, time consuming, and a pain in the burt. There had been loose talk of “getting the kids involved.” You may have heard that phrase, Parents ofa certain age proup use it a lot. The kids, needless to say, were somewhat ambivalent about this relusn to old-fashioned, pre-televi- sion ways, when families rolled up their sleeves and pfunged their arms into the foaming suds, happily singing songs as they scrubbed and scoured and rinsed and wiped together, “Rosanne’s on,” my daughter pointed out. “Then Married With Children. Sorry.” “My girlfriend's calling,” her brother explained. “f gotta go wait by the phone. See ya.” “You'll wash dishes too or PH sell your Barbie dolls into slavery,” I said calmly to our daughter. ‘My wife blocked the stairs before our son could escape. “IF you don’t do it, PMlery,” she warmed. “And I'l} videotape it,” 1 added, upping the ante, “and we'll play it to your kids, showing them how awful you were to poor old Grandia. Honestly, it was like a Clint Eastwood version of Father Knows Best. . “Mommy, Daddy says he’s gonna sell my Barbies into slav- ery!” squeaked the young princess. “You either help with the dishes or no more Toastie Pops,” Mom replied icily. A how! of pain greeted this, but soon cnough the family was glumly clumping about the kitchen, bang- ing pots and pans together, bonking plaies down on top of each other, slamniing utensils into the drawer. There was much sighing and accidental hitting of themselves against objects on the part of the prisoners. Halfway through, the upstairs phone rang and our son bolted, nter ANTI u eH STRICTLY PERSONAL dropping tis dish towel, . “i's the phone!” he gasped, £9 charging up the stairs and slam- a ming the door behind him. 83 He's almost as tal) as me, and | _—a ate heavier. I could see the expression on his face, a kind of a crazed young bull rhino look, head lowered for goring if anytning gets in its way. Let him go. Beyond a certain point, you cai, only control them through reason, | “You're finished in this town, kid!" [ beflowed. By the second night, the dish- dodgers had holed themselves up in their rooms, with every TV in the house left gn to confuse us as to their whereabouts. We refused to leave ainy food at the foot of the stairs, but diey must have sneaked down and raided the * fridge in the night and found left.” over pizaa, and nuked it in the microwave, My God, they'd learned survival skills! Being liberated parents who wouldn't drexm of lowering them- selves to the level of anned combat with their children, we decided to hell with the ungrateful, obstinate lite wretches, we'd do the job our- selves. We were going about this the wrong way. The trick was to lead by example. They'd see us doing the dishes together, laughing, exchanging witty anecdotes and quick quips, like happy real people instead of twisted sitcom characters. They'd emerge from their rooms and come down io the kitchen and silently pick up dish towels and line up behind Dad beside at drain board ... and we'd all break into song. Of course it didn’t wark out that way. Doing dishes by hand, it was impossible to complete 4 sentence without being interrupted by a pan clattering in the sink or water run- ning. “I said...” Mostly, my wife and [ just grumbied and muttered and barked at each other while we cleaned up. ne kids tiptoed around the kitchen. ’ Tn the end, we caught a new dishwasher and made a peace treaty with the kids. From now on we would take turns, ali four of us, doing the dishes. Otherwise, Mom and Dad would cut off the phone, cancel cable, sell the computer games, repossess the Nintendo, eat out it restaurants aad Jeave the fridge full of health food, throw a garage sale of Barbies and a certain comic book collection, and if that failed, we'd withbojd the batteries for the ghetto blaster. Ah, reason. Works every time.