My husband, while spectacular in many ways, has a fear that is shared with many guys his age. There is no pill for it or even a support group. It is more prevalent than the fear of snakes, flying, or clowns and it is, as far as I can tell, completely denied by the male race. It is the fear of the dishwasher.

Our dishwasher, like most, lives nestled next to the kitchen sink. It longs to snack on the dirty dishes, glassware, and cutlery and then spit them out clean. It happily churns for an hour or so and otherwise remains in quiet anticipation of its next meal.

My beloved objects to feeding the thing. He prefers to tease it by placing his coffee mug and cereal bowl in the sink next to it. I come along and, of course, give the creature its treats and give a look to the offender.

And when the machine is full of fresh tableware, my hero will reluctantly snatch a needed wine glass or spatula from its maw and leave it stuffed until I spend 3 minutes removing the bounty.

The only explanation is that he is afraid of the contraption.  He always denies it. He says he knows where it is and how to use it. And he can even tally the number of time he has filled and emptied it. The number he reports is in the hundreds of thousands. (Even I won’t say that and I manage the beast daily.)

So we are at an impasse.  I must accept what I consider unreasonable and foolish and continue to manage the machine. And in return, he’ll keep killing bugs for me.