Cuts Like a Knife

A few years ago, I caught an episode of the television series Everybody Loves Raymond that I felt epitomized what it is to be married (fans of the show might argue that every episode did this). The episode concerns a suitcase left on the staircase (I missed the beginning so I don’t know the events leading up to its being placed there) and for the rest of the episode, Ray and his wife Debra passive-agressively wait for the other to remove the misplaced item. Each grows increasingly frustrated with the other (both avoid explicitly saying anything to the other out of stubborn pride) and Ray even raises the stakes by placing some rotting cheese in the suitcase hoping the offending smell would motivate Debra to cave and put the thing away. And so the episode continues in this vein until the inevitable funny (but surprisingly insightful) yelling-match conclusion.

Well, it looks like Marcie and I are now caught in a similar standoff over a Henckels paring knife.

For the entire time that we’ve been married, we’ve been pretty equal in terms of dishwashing duties. The general rule is that whoever cooks, the other person cleans. But there’s one very strange exception to this: knives. For reasons I’ll probably never understand, Marcie avoids cleaning knives like Mel Gibson avoids sobriety. However, she certainly likes to use knives well enough. Such is the case with a nice set of Henckels knives we received as a wedding gift back in 2000. In particular, she loves using the set’s little paring knife for just about everything that requires cutting.

Unlike Marcie, I typically avoid using the Henckels knives because they require hand-washing (life’s short enough) and I find that our everyday machine-washable knives work just fine for most uses (slicing bananas, cutting up small pieces of food for Melody, etc.). But I realize that cutlery preferences are a personal thing and I have no qualms about Marcie’s paring knife inclinations.

However, once she uses that little guy, it ends up on the counter or in the sink where it seems to me that it remains untouched until I end up having to clean it. Now, in her defense, Marcie insists that she indeed does, in fact, wash knives. But I have a feeling that in the case of the paring knife, it’s either the exception to the rule or she only washes it before using it instead of after (the difference is subtle yet significant).

So after seeing that little paring knife make yet another appearance in our sink this weekend, I vowed to not wash it and just see how long it’ll remain in the sink. Well, today is Tuesday and it’s still there. Will it continue holding its position until tomorrow? Next week? Next millennium? Stay tuned.

UPDATE (8/11/06): The knife is no longer in the sink. Clean at last, it sits happily in its hardwood block home with all its Henckels neighbors. Minus the few days Marcie was feeling under the weather this week (poor Marcie!), I'd say the knife remained unwashed for maybe a total of 3 or 4 days. Not quite the comic results I was hoping for, but I guess life can't always imitate art!