Your Dishwasher Door | Vol. 4 / No.11.2

Photo: Ryan Hyde, CC BY 2.0

This Week In Tomorrow welcomes our newest contributor, Prudence Wyoming, who (after a brief introduction) offers us a stream-of-consciousness metaphor from the kitchen about making the world a better place.

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What do you do when two people you really think are bloody smart say, “Hey, would you like to contribute over here”? (Please tell me, I’m still in splutter odd noises mode). I mean

So, on the Left, we have people with advanced degrees, and over here, School of Hard Knocks, with a major in Things That Will Hurt and a minor in How NOT to Relationship. I’m not even on the Right, here: I missed the turn for the Ballpark, and I’m having fun playing in the weeds. But I observe — intensely — the world around me, and I do actively work to see things from the other side. You get to decide how valuable that is to you. I’ll be over here, watching the magpies battle the gigantic crow for the crumbs I set out last night, which features better acting than many shows I’ve seen lately.

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So let’s start this thing off with a soft pitch:

I follow the @BoredElonMusk account, a parody/maybe possibly (fingers crossed!) real life musings of a smart person that, like me, has ideas floating around the ol’ noggin that won’t shut the fragging Fraggle¹ up and let me just be for a sec.²

Back to the point though: this account seems to be a collection of random thoughts about everyday annoyances, and random thoughts about how to fix said problems tweeted back. Any tech-savvy person with time to kill could find all the ideas they ever needed just by scrolling this account–people want these things to be out there. So the other day, I posted about something that came up again today, namely, stupid automatic dishwasher doors.

Why, YTF even, in 2016 er, 2017, can we not have dishwasher doors that don’t take up the entire kitchen floor space when open?

My fridge can handle side-opening doors, my clothes washer can even manage a water-tight seal opening that way. But we lucky (or eco-minded — you can’t hand-wash dishes with that little water) ones that have them just have to deal with an awkward, clunky design that doesn’t encourage us to put those dishes away. After all, I’m of average height (for Americans, if you’re considering both males and females, and way above average for females) and I cannot comfortably step over the “blasted” door to reach the other side of the don’t-leave-things-on-the-counter-like-a-savage kitchen.

“But, but, what does this have to do with anything?” you ask?

We can’t be a society that makes progress until we own our failures, be they big s*** like sneaky racism creeping into our everyday language (looking at you, so-called “alt-right”) or little things that just gum up the works, and take our mental energy, leaving less for the Big Stuff. Unless we really consider them. Looking inwards at our failures and foibles hurts. But it’s important, so we do the job that needs doing.

And that’s what your dishwasher door has to do with making the world a better place.

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1. Hey, I can cuss on this thing, right? Cuz, if not, you’re getting about half the word count.
2. I may, perhaps slightly, be prone to moments of “I was in musicals in school.”
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Prudence Wyoming is an irregular contributor to This Week In Tomorrow.

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