Of Brains and Sponges

Brains and sponges have something in common: they require squeezing on a regular basis to remain useful.

Sponges are simple, utilitarian tools. Our household has lots of them, big ones, small ones, all colors. They’re mainly used for cleaning dirty dishes, a simple task requiring little brain function, which explains why men are sometimes assigned the task. The effort on the cerebral cortex ranks right up there with watching New Jersey Housewives.

In our home she cooks, I clean. It’s an equitable division of labor. She once suggested I move further up the food chain, like reading a recipe and following directions. It was an ill-conceived idea. Marital bliss cannot co-exist with such experiments. Meat cleavers are simply overkill for mincing garlic cloves.

Cleaning the kitchen will relieve any brain of the day’s accumulation of clutter…personal insults, injustices and outright rejections that flesh is constantly heir to. My utensil of choice is the long-handled scrub brush, not a soggy sponge.

A bloated blue sponge that floats around arrogantly in dull dishwater is repugnant. Splashing around in a sudsy sink will age hands in just minutes, not to mention the destruction of good nails. Moreover, no man would be caught dead wearing an apron and elbow-length yellow rubber gloves.

Like everything, there’s a protocol to proper dishwashing. Women write the instruction manual. What’s it to a man if an occasional dried rice kernel or two remains stuck to the wall of a supposedly washed pot. No big deal. And who ever looks at the bottoms of pots and pans? (Women, that’s who!)

For men, many of life’s lessons on proper cleanliness originate down on some creek bank. The brains of young boys are like sponges, absorbent and adaptive. The idea of acceptable cleanliness of cooking utensils is formed on camp-outs and fishing expeditions. Cleanliness is a relative term.

Grease and germs that dare to dangle in a pan after frying fish or bacon are exterminated by the simplest method: fire. After that, a wad of swamp mud rubs off the remainder of germ holdovers. Then a quick dip in whatever water is handy. No sponges necessary.

Somehow along the way men progress beyond fire and mud and live to tell about it. They’re now slaves to detergents. It’s more refined, says the Kitchen Queen, who inspects everything under the glare of a harsh halogen spotlight. Re-washing is frequent.

After washing, my tendency is to pick up the sodden sponge with tongs and fling it into the dishwasher. But Madame Decorum demands it be rinsed and squeezed, until all soaked-up grime and remnants of its day be removed. It’s a mindless process.

After last night’s thorough bout of rinsing and squeezing, my sponge is now an empty receptacle. It’s ready to absorb some more dirt from the next duty. I am about to put it away when I hear The Voice speak.

“Hey, let me give your brain a big squeeze. Then learn the parable of the sponge.”

Do you ever hear voices? I listen. Suddenly I feel a little squeeze.

I ask The Voice if it washes dishes, too.

It answers. “Sort of. I scrub and squeeze out the daily layered-up brain debris you accumulate. Your brain seems to be a glutton for goop.” I want to argue, but my defense is weak.

I ask it to please refrain from any future squeezing. I relish the rubbish of my past. It defines me. I carry it everywhere. It’s like a security blanket. To squeeze it out, why, I’d be an empty vessel. I imagine demons moving into the vacancy and setting up house in my cerebral gray matter.

Brains might seem like sieves, but they record everything. The Voice dredges up a reminder of my long-forgotten lust for apple sauce as a kid. I’d overpower my younger brother and beat him out of his. My dad finally got fed up and forced-fed me an entire can. I hate apples to this day.

Everything in life seems to work towards a meaningful conclusion. I consider hearing this parable of the sponge a turning point in life. Now when I hold a sponge in my hand I see myself. A good squeeze every day is a remedial event.

From now on dishwashing will ever be sacramental. Keep squeezing.


Bud Hearn
July 28, 2017

The Right Tool

It’s hard to imagine what thoughts may come from the simple act of peeling a peach.

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There’s a tool for every job; choosing the right one is critical. Today’s choice for me was unfortunate but instructive.

Sadly, Georgia’s meager peach crop is about over. They’re harder to find now than hen’s teeth. The only choices are the nubbin rejects.

Same with blueberries. Only the tasteless, pesticide-embalmed varieties from south of the porous border remain. Like white bread, their shelf life is long. Eaten, your shelf life shrinks.

This morning I eye the last plump peach in the bowl. Others see it, too. An avaricious nature will overrule any Christian virtue of sharing. I grab it. Quick.

The fuzzy skin distorts the flavor. It needs peeling. My tool choices are a potato-fruit peeler or a short paring knife. I recall my daddy’s advice: “Son, a knife is a man’s tool.”

The peeler is safer; the knife is, well, the man’s tool. I opt for it.

I pull out the sharpening iron, give the blade a good stropping. Satisfied with the razor edge, I start peeling.

Rings of peach skin fall in circles into the sink. Peach nectar, like love, can fill the air and cause a swoon. It’s easy to get careless with a sharp knife. Like a seductive kiss, dangerous possibilities are always near. There’s usually a price to pay. Today’s price is a sliced thumb.

I call for help. “Bring bandages, please.” The last precious peach lies wasted among the bloody peelings.

Having no peach and nothing else to do but ride out the pain, my wounded thumb and I convalesce by contemplating the inner connectivity of household tools and human nature. A stretch, I know, but we go with it.

With the right tool, when paired with vivid imagination, consider what might be accomplished anonymously and often with great personal delight. Metaphorically, speaking, of course.

Take tongues, for example. Like knives, they can slice and dice the corpus of our enemies (or our friends) in absentia and leave the bloody carcass of their character lying in shreds. All this carnage at a safe distance, too,

Then there are pliers. They’re helpful tools if anger gets a notion to pinch something, or somebody. Like small vices, we can stick the fictional fingers of politicians in the chokehold of our disgust. Squeeze the grip and hear their muffled screams much like a pricked voodoo doll. Now while the best revenge won’t pay the rent, it will allow us to gloat.

Ladders are dangerous tools, but we all use them. The bottom rung is crowded. We want the top. The risk/reward of climbing high must be considered. Vertigo is real, and the air is thin at the top. Everybody wants to be there, the top of anything, everything…the game, the job, and the wealthy. But there’s only one step at the top. From that lofty peak fate spins the roulette wheel.

Ah, the hammer. The cold steel tool of resentment can nail things air tight. Used as a crude bludgeon, it’ll make short work of driving the last nail in the coffin of a duplicitous friend or a stake through the heart of a bitter rival.

Screwdrivers are saviors. Life deals us defeats, winds of vicissitude confound us and courage abandons us. Hear as Macbeth asks: “If we should fail?” And Lady Macbeth’s response: “We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail.” Tighten up, hang in there.

Pruning shears come in many sizes. They’re useful for trimming the stealthy hubris from any wisteria vine whose pride exceeds its allotted boundary and reaches for more. Imagine what an occasional pruning by the Master Gardener might do for our ego.

So many tools, so little space to praise them. Honorable mention goes to two: WD 40 and Duct tape.

With the attitude of WD 40, it’s possible to grease the hung-up rusty relationships of life with little more than a few smiles and kind words.

Duct tape, applied regularly to our own lips or our tweeting app, will bring about much needed silence and many will live happily ever after.

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Enough said on more about nothing. Just get the right tool for the job. You’ll be glad you did.


Bud Hearn
July 7, 2017