Dishes!

I was washing dishes; Dad was scrubbing a pot, a very dirty pot. It was so gross and dirty that Dad's scrubby wasn't tough enough to srub. So he reached over and took a knife I had washed.

A knife I had washed, but hadn't rinsed.

It didn't register at first, but I almost had a heart attack when I did. I mean, I hadn't rinsed that thing. He shouldn't be using it. I was using it, using it with water and soap. Using it to make it clean. He was making it dirty. Couldn't he let me rinse it first? I mean, it wouldn't take a second.

That was silly. It was clean-ish, and it wasn't like he was eating with it. It was okay, I could deal with it.

...except I couldn't. I told myself it was stupid. I told myself he could use it, but I kept thinking about it. The more I thought about it, the more it consumed me. It was a downward spiral of thought. It was the yodel that starts and avalanche and sweeps a small Swiss village right off the map.

Yet the stronger the impulse to cry out, "STOP," grew, the more time had passed. The more time that had passed, the harder it became to drag up such and old and delayed subject. So the emotions built up. I wanted to weap, I wanted to laugh, I wanted to lunge accross the room and knock the knife out of his hand, I wanted to roll on the floor and beg for Dad not to scrub with that tool, anything but that.

...but that would have been ridicules. I mean, come on. It's no big deal.

It was a big deal. What about germs, what about soap contamination, what about knife fairies, what about... what about...

so...

#1) I had to share the bizarrety with you.
#2) I had to let it all out.
#3) This is totally fact number five for me. Remember the sevens? Yes, I'm still doing that. And I'm almost certain I'm on number five. As to what it is, don't ask me. Some sort of obsessive compulsiveness gone bad.