When Allan and I were first married and living in an apartment in Floral Park,  I had an encounter with a dishwasher.

Growing up, the only dishwasher that my family had was me. I would stand at the sink in our kitchen and wash and rinse the dishes and stack them in the drainboard to be dried later. I knew nothing of the workings of an automatic dishwasher, so you can imagine my elation when we moved into our little love nest and I realized that I now had a machine to do the dirty work. It was a top loader and it rolled out from under the counter top whenever its services were required.

A number of months went by and one Saturday while on a cleaning binge, I thought to myself “Gee, I guess it’s time I cleaned the dishwasher”. DUH!! I was obviously not the brightest newlywed on the block – about as sharp as a marble to be precise. I mean really, doesn’t the dishwasher interior get “clean” every time you hit the “Start Cycle” button? And to further prove that I was indeed not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I decided that it needed to be cleaned with DISH detergent. That’s what I had used all those years to make dishes sparkling clean, so why not use it to clean the inside of the dishwasher?

Exactly how much dish washing liquid a village idiot should put into a dishwasher to have the inside come out sparkling clean, no one knows. Suffice it to say, I obviously used a tad too much; a little bit of that stuff goes a long way. And of course, since I wanted the dish washer to be super clean, I probably added a decent amount. And maybe a touch more after that.

Things were going well at first. The dishwasher filled with steamy hot water and started the cycle. Then suddenly, after about 10 minutes, froth started to ooze from the top of the machine. Then bubbles started coming out even faster, cascading down the front, streaming down to the floor and making their way to the side door. “I Love Lucy” episodes had nothing on me.

I hit the “cancel” button, but alas, it was too late. Upon opening the door of the washer, bubbles literally exploded all over and they kept coming, and coming, and coming.

I yelled for my dearest who ran in and practically knocked himself out navigating the slippery floor. We grabbed some pots and started scooping bubbles (which were now about a foot high) to deposit out the door of the house and onto the patio. Now we not only had bubbles all over the kitchen…the suds were starting to fill up our patio.

And still the bubbles kept coming. Did you know the more you try to add water to bubbles, the soapier the situation becomes? Yeah, well I didn’t know that and as I tried to rinse out the dishwasher and douse the floor with water to defeat the foam, it just made matters worse.

I’m sure Allan was rethinking his spousal choice by now, but at least he couldn’t say he married a slob. We had the cleanest dish washer, kitchen floor and cement patio on the block.

Little did he know way back then, that the adventures with his bride would continue for all these years. And that’s why our blog is titled “The Escapades of Pookie and Allan!”