Q. Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean or dirty?

A. Dirty. I think.

Q. Didn’t you run them last night?

A. Me? Um I…don’t think so.

Q. They look clean.

A. Then they’re clean. Probably. Maybe.

Q. Ooh, gross. Look at this pot.

A. Oops. I just put that in there. Forgot.

Q. You put a dirty pot in with the clean stuff?

A. I thought they were dirty. I did say oops.

Q. So everything else is clean?

A.  That’s not necessarily a logical conclusion. Look, I’m trying to do a sudoku.

Q. Jeezy weezy! Somebody put a coffee cup where the small plates are supposed to go.

A. Somebody? There’s just you and me.

Q. Why would I put a cup in the spot for plates? I have a system. I know exactly where everything goes.

A.  So you’re saying I put the cup in the wrong place?

Q. Unless it was a burglar.

A. Has it ever occurred to you that there is no right and wrong place for a cup to go in a dishwasher? You just put stuff in until there’s no more room.

Q. Do you know what would have happened if the Romans ran their empire with an attitude like that?

A. So. Now a history lesson.

Q. The barbarians would have cleaned their clocks about 300 years earlier than they did.

A. But not in a dishwasher.

Q. This coffee cup looks clean, by the way.

A. Does it have water on the bottom?

Q. It’s empty.

A. Right, but when you put the cup in there upside down, the outside bottom is at the top.

Q. I’m sorry, I must have left my PhD in physics in the car.

A. Sarcasm is the bounced check of an overdrawn wiseass.

Q. You stole that line from somebody. I think it was me.

A. So sometimes water collects in the top of the bottom of the cup. Which tells you the dishwasher was on. Probably.

Q. Okay, the bottom doesn’t have water in it or on it.

A. It could have been wet and then the water evaporated. That’s always a possibility. Or maybe there never was water on the top of the bottom.

Q. Uh oh. I just noticed that the little cup thingie you’re supposed to fill up with dishwasher liquid is full.

A.  Aha. Sounds like somebody forgot to turn it on last night.

Q. Somebody? There’s just the two of us.

A. Don’t forget the burglar.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013, all rights reserved.