As I mentioned last week, my first job was as a dishwasher in a busy cafe, where I discovered that the removal of melted cheese and chili (known locally as 'superglue') is darned-near impossible. My boss was an overburdened cook, occupied with a minimum of five swearingly-annoying tasks at any given moment. Consequently she could get a bit gruff, and in her gruffer moments she made me think of Pong from The Ascent of Rum Doodle, that rarest of literary treats: a slapstick comedy about mountain climbing.
Eventually I grew up (somewhat), went to university, got married, and got a job that didn't involve washing dishes. Yet the specter of Pong never ceased to loom large over my destiny. The arrival of two short people has brought me full circle back to my cheese-plate days.
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| Pong II at work. |
Sadly, I simply cannot mama-hoover at the rate that she upends the world. My local branch of the Grumpy Persons Brigade (or 'the villagers' as a friend of mine very charitably calls them) cannot understand how challenging it is to keep up with a dedicated entropist, and they often look on with derision as we entropise our way through public places.
I have it on good authority that some time in the next eighteen years or so this sort of behaviour will stop. Someday Pong II will hang up her mess-saddle and then calmly inform me that I am embarrassing and could I please go away now. Someday I may even return to a job that does not involve Pong-imitators or molten cheese in any form.
Till then, zen mind. Beginner's mind. Dishwasher's mind.
