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The Tea Maker
Being drunk can be a mixed blessing. Let me explain.
Last year my nephew managed to convince his Mum to help him with a deposit for a flat. I told her she was making a big mistake but she went ahead anyway and has been paying half his mortgage ever since. Two months ago she bought him a dishwasher for the flat because he said he needed one. He has a sink, a plastic basin, hot and cold running water and he has full use of both fucking arms so I’m still not sure why he needed a dishwasher but my sister got him one anyway.
Last Saturday, my nephew then decided to have a party to celebrate something, possibly the fact that it was a Saturday, but more likely his ability to scrounge a deposit for his flat, half his mortgage for a year and, most recently, a new dishwasher – all from his Mum and all without any signs of embarrassment that I could detect.
At the end of the party (yes, we all had to bring our own food and drink) my nephew decided he would load all the dirty dishes into his new dishwasher. I was in the kitchen enjoying my last long vodka of the evening so I was able to watch what he was doing. I have to admit that I’ve never really watched someone else load a dishwasher before. It was quite an interesting experience.
The lad managed to get everything in, except one coffee mug. It didn’t matter how much he tried or which way he angled that coffee mug, the dishwasher door wouldn’t close. At one point I was going to offer him some advice but I was drunk, so I decided I should just stay out of it. I was glad I did because his problem became my entertainment.
He must have rearranged the layout of those dishes three or four times over a period of ten to fifteen minutes (granted, he was drunk too) before he managed to get everything to fit snugly and get the door to snap shut. He then switched the machine to ON and listened with pride to its faint and steady hum. With a sigh of relief he looked over at me, nodded and smiled.
In the spirit of a shared achievement, I raised my glass, drained its contents and said, “You’ve just spent fifteen minutes getting that coffee mug into that fucking machine. You could have washed it by hand in thirty seconds.”
Exasperated, he said, “But that’s why I got the dishwasher. So that everything could go in at once and I wouldn’t have to wash anything by hand.”
“Fine, so where will I put this fucking vodka glass?”
The Tea Maker
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