Columbus Day Discovery

It seems somehow appropriate to discover something new on Columbus Day, and this year I discovered the mojo of yet another American product had been deliberately destroyed without warning. Liquid dishwasher detergent can no longer protect me from myself. This is an enormous phooey.

I say that as Buddha's gift to the laundry industry, the queen of spots whose clothes attract --and of course only to the most prominently evident places, like right between the neck and the boobs-- lots of bright little stains. Because I do so much cooking, I used to throw away a lot of shirts flecked with blueberries, tomatoes, wine or the blood of scratched mosquito bites. The grease of olive oil was also treacherous. The Asian noodle soups I like were another mother lode of mess, so I gave up eating red colored ones after a white shirt I loved came home from the Szechuan Chinese restaurant looking like it had measles.

My life moved toward glory when I got one of those hints from Heloise by way of a friend: liquid dishwasher detergent has enzymes that eat the food off your plates, so they can eat the stains out of your clothes. And hot dog, they did! It was awesome to watch a drop of dishwasher detergent exterminate a smudge of strawberry on an ivory colored cotton jersey tee in under 30 seconds. Leave it on longer and you could watch it go for the color of the shirt. To get its appetite just right, you had to master the exquisite calibrations of rocket science. But once you did, it was exhilarating to watch a drop of that gel tackle blueberry splat. Liquid dishwasher detergent was magic. It made me fearless about juicy food, and saved me a mountain of money since I didn’t have to keep replacing stained clothes that even the dry cleaner couldn't fix. I proselytized to all my friends, urging them to keep a bottle handy.

Unfortunately, liquid dishwasher detergent is only sold in supersized bottles, so if you just need a Q-tip’s worth every so often, it takes years to empty one. Last week, after maybe four years, mine was finally bottoms up. Cascade, the brand I’ve relied on, now has several versions of itself in the supermarket, so I grabbed the cheapest one, which was expensive anyway. Sure enough three days later, when I pulled from the drawer the long-sleeve tee I wanted to wear--a favorite, there were two teeny rust colored dots near the left shoulder seam, just under the arm: pinhead in size but bright enough to be prevent me from wearing a dirty shirt.

I went straight into the kitchen, reached for the detergent (which I never use in the dishwasher, by the way) and waited for salvation from the new lemon scented version. I got a whiff of a slight lemon scent but nothing happened on the tee shirt. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I daubed the gel on the spots again. Not one of the two even blurred. I got so upset, I poured the liquid recklessly over the whole sleeve, grabbed a scrub brush and went at those two teeny spots. They just kept staring back at me, a pair of very beady eyes. This new detergent was just not that into them.

A pox on lemon scent and the makers of detergent. I am now impotent to clean up my own mess and poorer for the money wasted on a supersized bottle of a product that doesn’t work. This chalks up a big truth about the good old days. And it pretty much aligns me with everybody else who by Columbus Day had discovered we Americans are all living in a new world now. All those exhortations to “just believe, just believe” didn’t give the supersized Barack Obama we bought in November 2008 the eraser wand magic of Tinkerbell. The marketers tinkered with the product, taking its mojo away so it seemed heaven-scented. They left us stuck not just with a sweet smelling but vacuous brand. They took away our ability to remove the stains from what had already been cooked up. This Columbus Day, I think we have discovered that lemon scent comes from a real lemon.

~Sandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
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