Needed: Male-friendly dishwasher

Dishwashers are obviously designed for women. I say this because if they were designed with men in mind, manufacturers would not bother to make silverware baskets with several little compartments, because no matter how logical it may be to have several little compartments, men who load the dishwasher use a grand total of: one.

And always, it is the compartment nearest the front of the dishwasher. The other compartments don't exist, being hidden from men's sight because they open the dishwasher only as much as they have to in order to drop something in.

Numerous times I have patiently explained to the Hero that bunching all the silverware together in one compartment means they might not all get clean, which is the intent of putting them in the dishwasher in the first place.

And he nods as if he is listening very carefully, and the next time I open the dishwasher I find that he apparently had been thinking about something totally nondishwasher related instead of listening, for there, in the first compartment, jammed like sardines, are all the forks, knives, and spoons we own.

My brother's wife nodded knowingly when I mentioned this. "He does the same thing," she said. "They're just too lazy to pull out the whole dishwasher and put some silverware in the back."

"But the silverware doesn't --"

"Get clean, I know," she said, shrugging.

This tendency apparently has little relation to a man's general habits of laziness or personal standards, however.. My brother does his own laundry because, as his wife explains, "he separates every single piece of clothing when it comes out of the washer before it goes in the dryer, and I don't do that." So we are left to believe that the dishwasher anomaly seems more related to maleness than to personality traits.

Recently I opened our dishwasher to find, not unexpectedly, the front compartment jammed with utensils and the rest of the silverware basket completely empty. I pulled several pieces out and spoke to them, within earshot of the Hero. "We have some lovely accommodations here in the middle and the back if you would care to try staying there...it's much less crowded than that little room you've been jammed into."

"Why, thank you!" The family of forks and knives and auntie spoons said as I noisily spread them out among the compartments.

"This is much better!" they all said.

But this was lost on the Hero, which was perhaps just as well, as he can truthfully answer "no" should a white-coated man ever ask him if his wife talks to inanimate objects.

To appeal to men, dishwashers should be designed with a little chute at the top, similar to a library drop chute, into which guys could simply drop each utensil. From there it would be automatically sorted into appropriately sized baskets.

But this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. So we women will continue to spread out the utensils that have been crammed into the dishwasher -- and, occasionally, talk to them.