It boggles the mind!
Ok, so I’m a busy guy. At least that’s what I tell people when they want me to do them a favor. Cleanliness is a priority, but not necessarily a high one. I enjoy a clean area, but I’ve noticed with some certainty that cleaning only ever gets done when I’m procrastinating.
That being said, there are limits, for the love of god. As was evidenced by the month-long dirty-dishes pile-up that had recently taken up residence in my kitchen sink. In my defense, the pile was co-owned by one of my roommates.
Now and then (invariably when we needed a plate and a fork to eat with) some dishes got done. But then, having been used in the eating process, they returned back to the pile from whence they came. It was a vicious, dirty cycle.
We were fed up. We had to somehow break this self-sustaining loop of grime. We were hesitant to do it, because we weren’t sure exactly who was controlling the situation any more: Us, the dish-users, or the dish-pile itself.
It was a marathon washing session. So much so in fact that the simple task of washing and rinsing dishes would have been insufficient. There were so many dishes, glasses, pots and forks that the wimpy dish-basket we had couldn’t contain it all. It required active drying and shelf-placement. Oh my achin’ back.
The sight of our newly-found kitchen counter was one to behold:
So amazing, in fact, that the infamous Mr. Sparkle, whose soap comes from the mystic forests of Hokkaido, Japan (which, of course, is renowned for its abundant soap factories), deemed our countertop worthy of a visit. He is disrespectful to dirt, he bubbled.
Overcome with joy and the blinding light reflected off our counter-top, we gave a shout of victory and danced a little dance. But trouble was brewing…
Unbeknownst to us, the venerable all-american icon of clean kitchens everywhere in North America had been feeling the heat as of late from the oriental cleaning influence, and enough, as the saying goes, was surely enough. It was time to take a stand against this threat from the east. This was one counter that would not be claimed by the floating head riding on a cloud of bubbles.
In a coup that shocked us to our very core, Mr. White-shirt moved in. Mr. Sparkle, as the saying goes, was not pleased.
The battle that then took place was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I’m used to things blowing up, getting dirty, blood flying across the meadows, that kind of thing. These guys.. were something else entirely.
I never knew that scrubbing was so incredibly deadly.
Of course, being only a head, mr.sparkle was no match against the rippled muscles, which only years of domestic cleaning can produce, of Mr. Clean. Mr. Sparkle was scrubbed out of the counter-top as easily as the scrapings of blackened toast. There was only one Mister, it seemed, and his name was Clean.
Still slightly in shock over this whole debacle, we hesitantly congratulated Mr. Clean on his hard-fought victory, and invited him to come back whenever he felt the need to clean up a little.
"FOOLS!" he shouted. "There is still much work to be done here!"
Aghast, we watched him zip off.
To be honest, the apartment wasn’t exactly filthy to begin with, but this guy has an entirely different opinion of what constitutes "being clean". I guess when your name is the very same word, you take it pretty seriously.
It’s been a week, and he’s still here. I am ignorant of exactly how fabric can be coaxed into sparkling, but let me tell you, it’s eerie. The apartment is so bloody bright these days that I need to walk around with sunglasses.
I give him one more day. After that, I’m taking a bucket of street slush and drowning the little fucker in it.
