Our new washing machine was leaving blotches of detergent on dark clothes, so I called Sears to see if they could help. At first, I was going to ask if they would send out a repairman but then I remembered that I am not a sexist! Would they be able to send out a repair person? Still, although I hate to admit it, I was a little surprised when a woman with a tool bag showed up at the door.
After inspecting the machine, she wanted to know how much detergent we were using, which was almost none. She said, “too much.” Then she wanted to know how we loaded the machine, and I said we usually filled it about halfway. “Too full.” She ran the fill cycle so that I could see how little water was used. When she opened the lid I couldn’t really see any water.
Becoming a little agitated, I asked her what she thought about agitators. She said no agitator was needed in in high-efficiency machines like ours. The clothes wash themselves. Well, how about that? No detergent, no clothes, no water, and no agitator. Since these items, taken as a whole, constitute the sine qua non for anything I call a washing machine, I started thinking there was no washing machine either.
She then advised me that the machine needed yearly servicing and this was a good time to get it done. I agreed and said I would be in the other room doing some writing while she did the maintenance.
Afterward, as she pulled out the credit card thingy, she asked me what I was writing was about. I told her it had to do with the illusory nature of the universe.
“That’s interesting,” she said. “It seems to me that when I see something I call the color green, it might not be the case that there is anything out there that is really green.”
“Oh?”
“My dad taught us to question all our assumptions. When I’m driving from job to job, I like to think about what he said. I start to doubt reality.”
“Oh?”
Then she sold me the full-service household maintenance package and said, “I often think my life is like a movie in which I’m the main character. Sign here and I’ll be on my way.”
“Sure. Thanks for your help. Enjoy the movie.”
And then the repairman was gone. But wait. There really was no repairman, was there?