NTKOG #116: The kind of thin-skinned neatnik who spends her evenings wearing a ruffled apron and those ridiculous yellow latex dishwashing gloves.
I am: immune to pain. You’re looking at a dude who ate a steak sandwich twelve hours after getting her wisdom teeth out. I once put an ice pick through my whole palm, then went on mixing mojitos without so much as a schmear of Neosporin.
I am not: so delicate or anal-retentive that I need hand prophylactics just to wash a few dishes.
The Scene: My matchbox-sized apartment, slaving like Cinderella over a teetering stack of bowls super-glued together with soymilk residue. After spending the past year as a kept woman in a palatial converted 1920s mansion, it was a rude awakening to move back into an apartment where the dishwasher is this guy. As a result, I strenuously believe in blasting the water as hot as possible to at least approximate machine-powered sanitation levels.
Problem: I could only wash a glass or two before my skin would scald seventeen shades of fire engine and my finger tips would start peeling off. Great for my secret life as a gentleman art thief (no prints!); terrible for pretty much anything else.
The answer to this, as in all things, came from the charming Muscles. Muscles — as his epithet implies — has the heart of a lion, the physique of a well-groomed bear, and the hands of an 18th century duchess. Last summer, after dinner at his and Justice’s estate, he gathered up the dishes and snapped on a pair of yellow gloves.
“Dude?!” I sputtered. “You look like a promo for The Pacifier 2.”
The power of the gloves was immediately apparent: he didn’t even flicker at my ribbing, just gazed on with the smug serenity of a Bikram instructor. “They’re more helpful than you’d think,” he replied, then thrust his gloved hands into the cloud of steam rising from the sink.
My first purchase when I moved into my Boston apartment was my own pair of dorky yellow dish-washing gloves. And frig it if the ol’ guru wasn’t onto something.
The Verdict: Every time I peel off my gloves after a half-hour spell of doing dishes in 180-degree water, I gaze at my dry, unscalded hands in delight. If I were a 17th century peasant, I would burn these gloves because surely they are tools of magic and of wonder. But I am not a 17th century peasant. I am just a happily unboiled dishwasher — even if I am a slightly dorky looking one.
Also, I’ve fought the draft of this post for months now, convinced that y’all would leave me forever for sharing a story so dorky and banal. But after twenty minutes of passionately proselytizing about rubber gloves to Anglophile the other day, I realized my conviction is too great to keep bottled. If one dishwasher-less person reads this post and goes out to buy gloves, dude, this whole blog will have been worth it.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh please, there’s no need to hide your prudent practicality. In these ol’ Boston buildings the water is DANGEROUS. It will CUT you. Personally, I use bright pink dish gloves and they make me very happy.
The gloves are a good thing, truly. I keep a pair for handling caustic chemicals, but in pre-dishwasher days, my apartment’s water came out of the tap a few degrees short of boiling. Right on for sharing.
Don’t the gloves make the dishes more slippery? I’m all about protecting my delicate (monstrous) lady (sasquatch) hands, but I’m afraid of a sink full of broken glass.
I also thought they would make things slippery — esp. because I am already a legendarily bad smasher — but to my delight, they actually make dishes easier to hold! Just make sure you get ones that have easy-grip waffled texturing on the fingers and palms. It really helps! In five months, I haven’t broken a single dish — back in my last hand-washing apartment, I used to drop two or three a week!
This reminds me, I need to go by the Hallmark store and pick up a card reminding my dishwasher how much I appreciate it.
Don’t the gloves make your hands smell like weird plastic? I like the scald-proofing nature of them, but I always hate how they make my hands smell.
Oh, they totally do make your hands smell like sixth-grade science class. (Worm dissection day, anyone?)
I always wear gloves… it makes every wash easier… specially when you have some nasty things on your sink.
Somehow, it really works as a shield, like it’s not you who is putting your hands onto that… it’s a damn robot! :D
What else can I say? I LOVE the gloves, despite the funny smell…
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, BLOG. Today I am a dishwasherless uni student, but tomorrow I will be a glove-donning dish-cleaning fool!
YES! I am so, so happy.
You have forever earned my love by using “proselytizing” in a sentence. I thought you should know.
I am getting gloves today.
I’ve been going back and forth on wearing gloves. Do I save my hands or dork it out? What to do… Lately I’ve taken to keeping the water at non-scalding temps but it just doesn’t do the job AND my hands are still dry as the desert! I think this post just pushed me over the edge. Tomorrow I’ll be the proud owner of yellow rubber gloves. Hey, if enough of us use them, they’ll be cool right? Riiiight?
I do have a dishwasher. I call him “Rob”.
You know, I must say, it’s posts like these that really have me appreciating your writing that much more (possible?) You turn a seemingly simply topic – dish washing and rubber gloves – into somewhat of a melodic experience. I’m not trying to make you blush now, just telling it like it is.
Can you get “Marigolds” (note quotes and capital; it’s a brand name, and yes they’re bright yellow) in North America? I rarely bother because I can stick my hands in water straight out of the boiler, but they’re non-slip and seemingly non-smell. Occasionally I need protection for a cut (perils of a hobby involving use of scalpels) though.
I have the yellow kind and I use them pretty regularly – my hands get really dry and cracked in Michigan winters if I don’t. I never realized they were something to be ashamed of, but now I will be sure to reflect on my dorkiness… :(
That said, you sure can turn a phrase, TKOG.
I am also a follower of the goddess known as Yellow Rubber Gloves. I can wash dishes at any temperature, grab that nasty goo that builds up in the drain catcher without gagging at the touch and have substantially cut down my knife to skin contact incidents.
This post is incomplete without this statement:
*snap* “You wanna finish her off?”
hehehe, thank you for that!
Actually… in one of your other posts you mentioned gloves were awesome and as I am pretty much always cranking up hot water and then having to let it sit and cool down in a time span that is generally long enough for me to forget that I’ve initiated the process of doing dishes, I was like, “!” and I bought some the next time at Target. So, basically, you have already influenced me on the glove-buying front.