It’s a beautiful Sunday coming off a wonderful weekend.

I spend the day playing my favorite sport and doing absolutely nothing productive. And to make things better, Sunday Night Football is on with an interesting match up and I’m all set to watch in my favorite chair with one of my favorite foods.

Life is good.

But then, my father bursts in, and all the fun atmosphere dissolves.

And then I hear the worst four words in the English language: “Go wash the dishes.”

You probably just read that sentence and thought to yourself  “Wait, what? This kid is lazy.” Now although this is partly true, hear me out about why I hate washing dishes.

Number 1: yes, I am lazy.  But there’s more to it than that.  

Number 2: just the thought of looking at leftover food building up on a plate is disgusting.  Having to touch it with my bare hands?  No thanks!

Number 3, which is one of my most important reasons: my parents really want me to do this chore.

You know the phrase ‘ You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink it”?  I am that horse. Telling me to do something that I am already about to do or in the process of doing only makes me want to do it less. And the way my parents exaggerate the dish situation is so annoying.

They act as if washing dishes is the difference between a full D1 scholarship to Harvard and me ending up at Montgomery College (no offense to anyone who’s going there though. Go Raptors!)  But my parents are taking it too seriously, while I’m just here like it’s not that deep, fam.

I also can’t understand to save my life why Africans don’t use dishwashers. My parents seem to have grown up with this “myth” that “dishwashers are ineffective.”  That was the subject of all of their bedtime stories to me.

In my opinion, that doesn’t even make sense. Why would dishwashers be a necessity in almost every American household if they don’t work? Why would billion dollar dishwasher companies like Maytag continue to sell multiple dishwashers worldwide if they didn’t wash dishes?

I decided to test the legend of the useless dishwashers for myself.

I went home and prepared a presidential-style debate to convince my father of the merit of learning by doing.

And it worked!

Instead of yelling at me about the evils of dishwashers and my own laziness, my dad told me to go ahead and try it for myself.

At this moment I felt as if the heavens opened up, a beam of light shone down on me, and I became an African hero.

I loaded the dishes into the dishwashers and added the glorious soap, and one hour later, I noticed exactly why I use my hands to wash dishes.

The legends were true.  Our dishwasher sucks.

Tune in next week when I convince my dad that we should buy a herd of minks and let them lick the plates clean.

Anything to get out of doing the dishes!