Election confusing appliances, too

Published Tuesday, March 4, 2008

I opened General Electric the Washing Machine’s cover and reached in for my clothes. I stopped. I looked closer, and pulled my arm back out. “Alright,” I said to him, “what’s with my clothes?” It looked like someone had tied all the arms and legs together.

General Electric played it innocent: “Why? What’s wrong with them?” Uh huh, General Innocent.

“What’s wrong with them?” I asked him. “They look like a braiding experiment at an insane asylum!” They indeed did. Not only were the legs square knotted together, a couple of the knots had shirt sleeves in them, too. I looked again. It looked like a backlash on a fishing reel, only bigger. I tugged on a pants leg. Everything came up with it.

“He’s confused,” commented Lady Kenmore the Electric Dryer, who hasn’t exactly been one of his biggest fans since he started collecting Speed Queen dryer sales literature.

I began plucking at one of the knots, down inside him. With one hand holding onto the clothing, I reached over and gently patted Lady Kenmore. Then I asked her: “What’s he confused about?”

“Oh, everything, I guess,” she replied. “He’s reached that age, you know, where….um….” Lady Kenmore’s pilot lights blushed red, and she began to fan herself with her front.

“Are you feeling ok?” I asked her.

“Well, I’m kind of hot,” she replied. “Life is sure confusing.”

“Give me some examples of appliance confusion,” I asked of her.

“Well,” she replied, “I wanted to get married, settle down, and raise a big family of electric blenders, but it just didn’t work out.” She quit fanning herself, and modestly closed her front back up. She wasn’t so modest when she was younger. Back then, every time you loaded her up, she hit on General Electric. He still has scratch marks on his side.

He kind of liked the attention. Back then.

“A life of service such as you’ve given me, that’s a wonderful thing,” I said to her. “Plus,” I added, “I didn’t care what went on down here when you weren’t working.”

“Ooooo,” she said, “what happens in the basement stays in the basement.” She went back to fanning herself.

“Now, back to you, General — what’s the deal?” He was eying Lady Kenmore with a new appreciation for her sweet console layout. Lady Kenmore twirled her dials coquettishly right back at him.

I cleared my throat, and went back to separating my wash.

“Well,” said the General, “it seems like my whole life, I’ve turned to the right. Ronnie Reagan, George Senior, Georgie Junior—these guys were my heroes.” The General fell back into his thoughts for a moment.

“Then what happened?” I asked him. These clothing knots were really tight.

“Then, I don’t know, Hillary came along, and she’s as mean as a junk yard dog.” The General grew quiet.

“Uh, huh,” I said. “What’s so mean about her?”

“Oh, hell,” he said, “she wants to be president so she can fire Bill. But before she fires Bill, she’s going to fire everybody. I tell you, that lady’s scary.”

“I guess you see something I don’t,” I told him.

“What I know, I got from the steam mangle she uses on her pants suits.”

“Yeah, come to think of it, she never does wear a dress, does she.”

“Nope. Maybe when she’s president, she’ll pick a fight with some measly third-world dictator, go in, kick a little butt.”

“Really?” Somehow that wasn’t how I pictured her, but, who knows. A woman like her, she could have been saving up whupbutt for a long time, need to get rid of some of it.

“Then,” continued General Electric, “I’d maybe be reactivated, see faraway conflicts, and …”

“Wait,” I said. “You’re a little old for this, aren’t you?” He was like sixty in human years.

“No way,” he exclaimed. “I can still clean up an insurrection or two.”

“Sure,” quipped Lady Kenmore, “until your warranty expires.” She paused, a master of timing, well, mistress: “Oops!” she exclaimed. “It’s already expired. Like 12 years ago.”

“Maybe you could go with him,” I suggested to Lady Kenmore.

“Me?” She kind of looked down at herself. She said: “Unless hot flashes are deadly to anyone but me, I doubt it.”

“So, General, what’s all this got to do with you knitting my clothing into a clump?” One of the problems with these people is keeping them focused.

“Well, that’s what happens.”

“What? What happens?”

“When you spin to the left, ‘stead of the right, you get kind of confused.”

Oh.

“He’ll be conserving water like a tree-hugging liberal, any day now,” said Lady Kenmore. Then she poked him in the side and firmly stated: “I like Barak. What’s wrong with him? Huh?”

Even the appliances are confused this election year.

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Alan Linda writes from his home in New York Mills.