Today, the Kitchen. Tomorrow...

By Rick Horowitz

So innocent-looking -- isn't that the way it always is? So innocent-looking, and then you turn your back for a second and --

I'm being stalked by a crazed dishwasher. Not a guy dishwasher. Not a gal dishwasher. A machine dishwasher. Normally, I wouldn't bother you with this sort of thing, but I've got to tell someone. I mean, I may turn up disappeared someday; the police need to know where to start the search.

It wasn't my idea, having a dishwasher -- that's the first thing you have to understand. I moved into the house and there it was, a little portable job from Sears, nestled up against the stove and minding its own business. (Right.) When you wanted to use it, you rolled it over to the sink, attached it to the faucet, poured the detergent, pushed the right buttons and off it went. Fifty-eight minutes later, you had clean dishes.

Of course, 58 minutes earlier, you'd had clean dishes, too, which is why I never wanted to use it. That was the part that had always puzzled me: Before you put your dishes in a dishwasher, you're supposed to wash your dishes by hand. Of course they'll come out clean -- they went in clean!

The dishwasher wasn't just unnecessary, I told everyone who asked (and plenty of people who didn't), it was ridiculous -- a total waste of space and water and energy. And then I was converted.

I saw the difference between "clean," and "machine clean." They gleamed, those dishes did, as they'd never gleamed before. It was time well spent, I decided. True, you couldn't use the sink while the machine was running, but what was a little inconvenience compared to really clean dishes?

The second thing you have to understand is that all those early conversations about the dishwasher, all my preconversion complaints, took place right there in the kitchen, within earshot, so to speak, of the dishwasher -- if dishwashers had ears, which of course they don't. (Right.)

They've got ears, and they've got long memories, too. I may have become a dishwasher fan, but this machine knew my past -- and a dishwasher never forgets.

Every now and again, we'd think we'd notice the wash cycle taking a little longer than it was supposed to. We weren't paying close attention or anything; it was just a feeling we had: Instead of 58 minutes, it might have been 60 minutes this time, or even 65. No big deal -- we were cut off from the sink for longer than we wanted to be, but look how clean the dishes were!

When it got to 72 minutes, we knew we weren't imagining it. When it got to 80 minutes, we started worrying.

It wasn't just the sink anymore, either. An 80-minute dishwasher meant there wasn't much hot water left for showering; we had to soap up and rinse down in a hurry or we'd be wearing icicles. And people needed to go to sleep; an 80-minute dishwasher rumbled on past some people's bedtimes, and there were no sweet dreams until the machine had quit for the night.

Gradually, we started scheduling things to make room for it. We'd have dinner earlier. We'd go to bed later. We'd shower in the morning. It didn't do a bit of good.

Relentlessly, inexorably, it came -- a minute here, a minute there. Now it's 83 minutes. Now it's 89. The more time we'd give it, the more time it wanted. I've offered it extra detergent. I've apologized for my bad attitude -- and still it comes! It won't be satisfied -- I'm convinced of it now -- until it has total control of our lives. Today, the kitchen. Tomorrow, the world.

The night before last, it ran 110 minutes.

And last night, I swear I heard it whispering to the microwave.