Rant of a twenty-first-century teenager

Well.

Here we go.

My first entry will be in English, which makes completely no sense at all, since I have been in Austria for the past week and the idea for this entry popped into my head in Italy, the week before. But I never said my thoughts made any sense and here we are.

This post is going to be about dishwashing.

And then I don’t mean dishwashing with a dishwasher. I mean dishwashing with a sponge, a sink full of steaming water and washing-up liquid. Which is something we, twenty-first-century teenagers, are not used to anymore, since basically everyone has a dishwasher nowadays.

But what happens when you go on holiday? My parents don’t camp and my mom (please don’t mind me mixing British English and American English, I’m having trouble deciding between the two) starts getting annoyed after a few days in a hotel, so what do we do? We rent a cottage. Which is, in fact, the term for holiday home.

In this cottage, we find nearly everything, and most things are completely superfluous. What, in fact, are we to do with an astonishing amount of ten glass beer mugs, when we are with three people, one of which doesn’t like beer, one of which is supposed to be the designated driver since no-one else drives, and one of which is sixteen years old and unable to drink more than 0,1 litre of anything at once?

I’m drifting off. The point is, in every cottage we’ve been to this past holiday, and basically every cottage I can remember, we’ve been surprised with a lot of bloody pointless artefacts, and there was never a dishwasher. Never.

Coming back to my main point. I hate dishwashing. By hand, I mean. First of all, the water is always either too warm for my fingers to touch, or too cold for the dishes to get clean. Secondly, the washing-up liquid either creates an incredible amount of foam, or doesn’t do anything at all. Or it’s dangerous, that too. As I said, I was in Austria last week, on holiday, in a cottage without dishwasher, and on the label of the washing-up liquid thing it said, “Avoid contact with eyes. Wear a mask during use.”

Wear a mask during use? It’s freaking washing-up liquid! Very comforting.

Then, there is the agony of choice. Shall I do the washing, or shall I do the drying? I used to be a big fan of washing, since that usually doesn’t take as long and you can watch the dryer finish the job after you’ve done your share. Oh, the schadenfreude. (That actually is an English word, not kidding. It means “gloating”, or “malicious delight”.)

But then I stopped chewing my nails, and I discovered that during the washing part of the dishwashing your nails get weak and are basically about to break the moment you take them out of the steaming / icy water. So then I switched to drying, which is not nearly as much fun. You don’t get the delight of seeing the dirt wash off the dishes, and now you’re the one who’s still standing by the sink, grumbling, putting things away, while the washer’s already slumped on the couch, drinking coffee and eating cookies.

It’s okay to call me spoiled. I feel a bit spoiled, reading what I just wrote. It just had to get out.

Please, people who rent out cottages, please put a dishwasher in! We’ve been to the moon, for heaven’s sake, space is going to be next year’s holiday destination for all I know, and do we have to do our dishes by hand there? No sir! There is bound to be a dishwasher on the next Apollo whatever-it’s-going-to-be-called.

Please. Do it for the sake of your children, and your children’s children, and everyone’s happy teenage years!

Signing off.
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