| A homepage of Alexander Aizenberg |  |
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Perhaps, right now, when you read this very page it does not contain a lot of useful information. If you are in rush you can go directly to my album, or mail to: almaiz @ jmail.ru . I used to love to compose music . And if you have a decent sound card just press a small sign J, and you may enjoy a short fragment of my music. Besides, I am fond of computer science and below are my modest awards.
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After the dishes are washed and the sink rinsed out, there remains in
the strainer at the bottom of the sink what I will call, momentarily,
some "stuff". A rational, intelligent, objective person would
say that this is simply a mixture of food particles too big to go down
the drain, composed of bits of protein, carbohydrates, fat and fiber.
Dinner dandruff. [Think of the time before disposals].
Furthermore, the person might add that not only was the material first sterilized by the high heat of cooking, but further sterilized by going through the detergent and hot water of the dishpan, and rinsed. No problem. But any teenager who has been dragooned into washing dishes knows this explanation is a lie. That stuff in the bottom of the strainer is toxic waste - deadly poison - a danger to the health. In other words, about as icky as icky gets. One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was 13 was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - BARE HANDS - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon BARE HANDED - a kind of mad courage. She found the spoon in a clump of coffee grounds mixed with scrambled egg remains and the end of the vegetable soup. I almost passed out when she handed it to me to rinse off. No teenager who wanted to live would have touched that without being armed with gloves, a face mask and stainless steel tongs. Once in school, I came across the French word ordure, and when the teacher told me it meant "unspeakable filth" I knew exactly to what it referred. We had it every night. In the bottom of the sink. When I reported my new word to my mother at dishwashing time, she gave me her my-son-the-idiot look and explained that the dinner I had just eaten was in just about the same condition in my stomach at the moment, rotting, and it hadn't even been washed and rinsed before it went down my drain. If she had given me a choice between that news and being hit across the head with a two-by-four, I would have gone with the board. I lobbied long and hard for a disposal and an automatic dishwasher, knowing full well that they had been invented so that nobody would ever have to touch the gunk again. Never mind that any parent or objective adult might tell me, I knew that the stuff in the sink strainer was lethal and septic. It would give you leprosy, or something worse. If you should ever accidentally touch it, you must never touch any other part of your body with your finger until you had scalded and soaped and rinsed your hands. Even worse, I knew that the stuff could congeal and mush up and mutate into some living thing that would crawl out of the sink during the night and get loose in the house. Why not just use rubber gloves, you ask? Oh, come on. Rubber gloves are for sissies. Besides, my mother used her bare hands, remember. My father never came closer than three feet to the sink in his life. My mother said he was lazy. But I knew he knew what I knew about the gunk. Once, after dinner, I said to him that I bet Jesus never had to wash dishes and clean the gunk out of the sink. He agreed. It was the only theological discussion we ever had. My father, however, would take a plunger to the toilet when it stopped up and with even worse stuff. I wouldn't even go in the room when he did it. I didn't want to know. But now. Now, I am a grown-up. And have been for some time. And I imagine making a speech to a high school graduating class. First, I would ask them, "How many of you would like to be an adult, an independent, on your own citizen? All would raise their hands with some enthusiasm. And then I would give them this list of things that grown-ups do:
I'd tell the graduates that when they can do these things, they will be adults. Some of the students might not want to go on at this point. but they may as well face the truth. It can get even worse than the list suggests. My wife is a doctor, and I won't tell you what she tells me she has to do sometimes. I with I didn't know. I feel ill at ease sometimes being around someone who does those things. And also proud. A willingness to do your share of cleaning up the mess is a test. And taking out the garbage of this life is a condition of membership in a community. When you are a kid, you feel that if they really loved you, they wouldn't ever ask you to take out the garbage. When you join the ranks of the grown-ups, you take out the garbage because you love them. And by "them" I mean not only your own family, but the family of mankind. The old cliché holds firm and true. Being an adult is dirty work. But someone has to do it.
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