RedRavenPoems

They sat no man has ever shot while doing the dishes, or something like that. But I don’t think that’s always true. After all, from my own experience, a man can still be hurt while trying to help.

In my youth I felt the sting of this. My mother was hard on me growing up, always was, you get used to it though. Doing the dishes was a chore. One you had to do exactly the way she wished it done, or face the consequences.

I still remember the time when I first didn’t do them the way she preferred. I had washed and placed them all neatly in the drainer. Yet just one dish, the smallest of the plates, was a hair iut of place.

You would have thought the world had ended -or that I had committed murder- from her reaction. Yelling, screaming, letting me know in no uncertain terms that I was a failure and couldn’t follow simple directions.

To argue back in defense would have escalated. I was 10. I didn’t have a say, and I learned that lesson well by then. So I would keep my head down, and carry on.

Perhaps that was why later in life I had an aversion to dishes. I thought it was silly, others did as well. The opinion was reinforced however, during the one and only time I was married.

It was another case of idiocy and insanity. I was washing the dishes, most of the cleaning chores were mine, on top of working 12 hour shifts at that time. When I came face to face with violence again.

This time it was in the form of a small angry woman, brandishing a knife in my face. Not much you can do at that point. Besides stand there and listen to the screams.

For once it wasn’t because I was cleaning wrong, or I hadn’t put them away exactly right. No this time, it was due to a couple more tame facts.

I wasn’t paying her attention, and I liked to read when relaxing. So when’s the best time to pick a fight with a sharp object? When he’s covered in soapy water and messy food from the dinner he prepared, then cleaned up.

So yes, washing dishes can still get a man shot, or in my case, a knife in the face. Either way, I think it was the dishes fault.