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It used to be said that the purpose of journalism was to “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” While I’m not sure if that is still true for journalism today (Fox News seems particularly confused as to which side needs the comforting), as a description of my parenting style is could not be more apt: when my children are upset I want to be the first one to make them feel better, but when they are comfortable there is nothing I like better than to stir them up.

Don’t get me wrong: by “comfortable” I don’t mean “happy.” Happy is good. Happy is the preferred state of existence for all beings. No, when I say “comfortable” I mean “complacent.” I mean “unmotivated.” I mean “sedentary.” When I think of “comfortable” I think of butts on a couch—my couch—and I am immediately filled with the urge to make those butts get up and go do something. Maybe not right this second (although sometimes, yes, right this very second, as in “turn off the PS3 and get off the couch now”), but always eventually. And always sooner rather than later. And oh-so-most-definitely always the very moment those butts have turned eighteen and have graduated from high school.

Am I the only one who still feels this way? Sometimes, judging from the number of young adults I still see living with their parents, it certainly seems like it. And this, I must admit, is something that strikes me as just unnatural and odd: when I was eighteen I couldn’t wait to leave home and start the next chapter of my life. This wasn’t because my home life was so terrible: while it was by no means perfect, it wasn’t like it was so awful I contemplated dropping out of high school and running away. However, by the same token it wasn’t such a cushy place that I was loathe to leave it and create my own version of home somewhere else. In other words, it was the perfect combination of comfortable and afflicting: I wanted to leave, but if I had to, I wouldn’t have been inconsolable if I had had to stay. (Well, maybe a little inconsolable.) Nowadays, however, at least judging from the number of twenty-three-year olds who have never left home—not even once—I’m not so sure that we, as parents, are so good at providing that “afflictingly comfortable” place anymore.

Of course, usually whenever I voice these concerns out loud people all say the same thing: it’s the economy. To which I always reply: are you kidding me? We graduated high school smack dab in the middle of the Reagan years, when interest rates were at thirteen percent and the unemployment rate was close to ten, and yet we managed to pry ourselves out of the nest soon after high school graduation. So it’s not the economy—at least not the national one.

Is it a personal economy then? Is it a paucity of inner resources, of self-confidence and gumption? Is it fear—the fear of leaving a house where there is always heat, always food, the internet and cable bills are always paid on time, and laundry detergent magically replenishes itself? Is it the fear of downsizing, of making do with less?

That would make sense: after all, leaving the nest is kind of scary. It always has been. The thing we need to teach as parents, however, is that there is a difference between “roller coaster through a dark tunnel” kind of scary and “axe murderer in the closet” fear. And the easiest, and probably the best way to do that is by inserting that lever and prying those butts off of our couches.

I’m sure they’ll thank us for it later. (And if not—well, at least we got our couches back.)

Dear Little Girl Who Picked Her Nose on Stage All Through the Dance Recital:

If I were you, for Christmas this year I would ask for a video camera, which I would then learn to use as quickly as possible so that I could spend the next five years or so sneaking around the house trying to capture the worst and most embarrassing moments of ALL of my family members (yes, even Grandma, Grandpa, and the dog). I would then stash that film in a secure location (maybe that same ice cave way up north where they are keeping the world seed bank?), and then, finally, send a blackmail letter to everyone on that video. Trust me on this: if you don’t take my advice, and take it soon, your family will be able to hold the “Great Gold Mining Episode of 2012” over your head for the rest of your life.

I’m not saying that because your family is evil or malicious. Not at all: in all likelihood, they won’t be holding it over your head to be mean. Just like they won’t be embarrassing you with it forever to be mean, either. No, the reason they will bring up the story (and show the video) to your future husband the very first time they meet him will not be because they are trying to make you shrivel up inside your own skin and die from extreme mortification; on the contrary, they will be doing it because they love you. Really. For the same reason they will post it on YouTube so that one day, when you least expect it, you will open up Facebook and see yourself—picking a winner—as the newest internet meme. Asking them not to do it—telling them not to do it—won’t do any good. In fact, it will probably just make things worse.

“What?” they’ll say. “What are you getting so upset about? You were three; it’s not like you still do that kind of thing—or do you?”

And, oh, how everyone will laugh. Everyone, even you, because if you don’t laugh they will call you “uptight” and “sensitive,” which will only lead to other, equally embarrassing stories about the time you had a temper tantrum when they showed the same video at your kindergarten/8th grade/high school/college graduation ceremony. And so you will grit your teeth, and smile, and watch the damn video with everyone once again. Unless.

Unless you take my advice and get the goods on them, too.

So start now. Film your dad secretly watching (and tearing up over) your “mother’s” collection of Nicholas Sparks movies. Film your mom wolfing down the last of her birthday cake (the one she passed on at dinner—“Oh, I couldn’t eat another bite—it looks delicious, though”) while standing over the kitchen sink at midnight. Film you older sister squeezing blackheads before her big date, and your older brother using your sister’s eyebrow pencil to fill out his fourteen-year-old “mustache.” You could even film your grandfather indulging in his secret passion: watching “RuPauls’s Drag Race.” (On second thought, hold on to that one—it might be worth a car when you turn sixteen.)

Don’t worry that this will turn you into a sneak. I mean, it will turn you into a sneak, but that’s okay. As the youngest, that’s already your job. And don’t worry that this is somehow proof of your family’s “disfunction.” Your family is not dysfunctional—at least no more so than most. Families are groups of people that are held together by both love and secrets—dysfunctionally so only when the secrets are unevenly distributed.

For example, like when there is a video of one family member picking their nose for five long minutes on center stage when they were three.

In the fictional world of Patrick O’Brian’s 19th century Royal Navy, the worst thing an officer could be called was a “scrub” (the 19th century equivalent of a “real douchebag”). The worst thing a common sailor could be called, however, was a “sea lawyer.” A sea lawyer was someone who thought they knew a little bit about sea law, but, in reality, knew nothing about it at all. In O’Brian’s world, it was a terrible thing to have a sea lawyer on board—not so much because they were so woefully ignorant themselves, but because their ignorance was contagious: it could spread through the lower deck quicker than a case of the marthambles (a 19th century term for what we now call “the crud”).

It wouldn’t take a sea lawyer long at all to convince his shipmates that if a ship was struck on a reef, then they were all free from impressment, or that if their officers lost their commission papers in an accident, they no longer had any authority over the crew. In the strictly confined world of a man of war, there was nothing worse than having a “parcel of sea lawyers,” on board.

I mention this because, recently, I have observed that the same thing often occurs amongst teenagers, especially when one of them is possessed of a little knowledge and a lot of certainty. In much the same way that a 19th century sea lawyer could lead an entire deck astray, a 21st century teenager can infect an entire class with their own particular brand of bullshit; in fact, it is easier in the teenage world, because at least on a ship there are some sailors who have been around the world a time or two before—in a room full of teenagers, there are none. This is why in the teenage world arguments are won not through merit, or even logic, but rather by how many times a story has been told. If they hear it from enough people, then it must be true (even if all those people are simply parroting the same originally erroneous source over and over again).

Take, for example, the most recent story to sweep through the lower deck at my house; the one concerning the all important getting of driver’s licenses. Apparently one of them decided (and convinced a fair number of the rest of them) that the way to “get around” having to take your driving test was to wait until you turned eighteen, at which point the state would simply give you a license when you requested it, no questions asked.

In vain did I try to refute this argument. “Why,” I asked, “would the state issue you a driver’s license without knowing whether or not you knew how to drive?” Because, I was told, “everyone” knows how to drive by the time they’re eighteen. When I pointed out that I got my first license well past the age of eighteen, and yet had to take a test, their response was, “well, things were different back then,” as if I had had to learn to parallel park on a Brontosaurus next to Fred Flintstone.

Google was no help to me in this argument. Neither was showing them the DMV manual. And, since unlike the Royal Navy, flogging is not allowed, my only hope was to wait for another, even more convincing teenage sea lawyer to come along and refute the story, or wait for reality (the most convincing lawyer of all) to saunter in and refute it herself.

Luckily for all of us, that is exactly what reality did: refute everything. And what’s even better, she got to refute it all from behind that little desk at the local DMV.

Different people have different ways to mark the beginning of summer. For some, it’s the opening of the pool. For others, it’s the first backyard cookout. As for myself, however, I have always considered the first sign of summer to be the first time I hear a child say the words, “I’m bored.” (This can also be the first sign of winter or spring break, or even, if the child is dull enough, the first sign of a long weekend, but for most children it means the beginning of summer vacation.)

I’m always a little bit amazed (and a lot annoyed) when I hear a child say these words out loud. While it’s not as bad as saying “I’m dull,” it is certainly close enough to make me cringe. In fact, I wonder that they can even say such a thing without dying of shame. Although who knows: perhaps, for other people (and other people’s children), this isn’t such an embarrassing statement to make. Heck, maybe they feel the same embarrassment for me that I do for them when I say something like “I don’t like shopping,” but somehow, I doubt it.

Luckily for me, I haven’t heard the “B” word from my own children for several years now—not because they are perfect children, of course, but rather because they have learned, painfully and over time, that my usual response to that statement is to tell them a long and even more boring story. Well, boring to them at least: I think it’s fascinating and inspiring. What I tell them is the story of how J.K. Rowling came up with the idea for Harry Potter.

Here’s the story: Once upon a time J.K. Rowling was taking a boring train ride from her boring job as a secretary back to her boring house when the train was delayed for three boring hours because of an accident up the line. (Was it a boring accident? Probably—at least to everyone who was not directly involved. No, scratch that: it was probably even boring to them.) Since this happened in the days before internet (really!), or even before cell phones were common (double really!), she had no Angry Birds, no Facebook, and no Words With Friends to distract her. And, since she had only planned on being on the train for a short time, she didn’t even have a book. All she had was her boredom, or rather, in her case, her imagination, which, unlike 3G, always gets reception, no matter how far out in the boonies you may be.

So what did she do? Well, she used her imagination to create the story of someone else—a young boy who was also on a train. A young boy who was a wizard and didn’t know it. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The first few times I told this story to my kids they rolled their eyes and said, “So, I’m supposed to go write “Harry Potter”?

“Of course not,” I answered. “’Harry Potter’ has already been written. Go create something else.” At which point they would usually go create a mess. But that was okay (kind of, sort of), because at least then they were doing something besides whining to me about how “bored” they were. Now that they are older (and while not necessarily wiser, certainly cannier), they never tell me they are bored anymore, and so never have to hear the “How J.K. Rowling Came to Write Harry Potter,” story. And while I’m not so smug as to believe I solved the problem of them being bored, I am smug enough to believe that I definitely solved the problem of them telling me about it.

Which, as far as I’m concerned, is just as good.

“The only thing constant in life is change.”–Francois de la Rochefoucauld

Of all the things that annoy me (and there are plenty), one of the most annoying has to be the way that some people will form an opinion about you, and then—despite all new evidence to the contrary—refuse to let it go. The grandmother who still sends you ceramic unicorns because you loved them when you were ten. The friend who always tells you that parties start half an hour before they actually do because, back in college, you were always late. The boss who gives you a list of ways you need to improve, and then refuses to recognize when are you meeting those goals. It’s like your relationship with those people is in stasis, and no matter what happens in your (or their) lives, when they are dealing with you they will always return to a certain moment in time, like a computer that has its time machine feature activated daily.

Still, as much as this annoys me, I have a confession to make: when it comes to my own children I am definitely guilty of this myself. I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m one of those moms who, if left to her own devices, would have probably left the training wheels on their bikes until they turned thirty. Who just might cut their meat for them at their own wedding dinners. Who will probably still buy them socks and underwear for Christmas when we are both in the nursing home together.

I recognized this trait in myself early on, when my daughter, Clementine, was still very small—and yet not so small that she had to be held in my arms while I tried to eat my breafast. Luckily for me I was dining out with my friend Nancy at the time, who took one look at the precarious situation and said, “Why don’t you put her in a high chair?”

“A high chair?” I said, appalled. “But she’s only a baby.”

“She’s trying to crawl on the table,” Nancy pointed out.

And she was right: Clementine was. And so, from that meal on I put her in a high chair. Of course, then I kept putting her in a high chair until her feet practically hit the ground, so it’s not really like I learned anything from it. And, in fact, when my second child came along I still hadn’t learned much about allowing room for change—I didn’t even consider putting an end to breastfeeding until he dropped a half-eaten chicken leg down the front of my nursing bra. (In retrospect, I’m glad it happened that way: as oblivious as I was, I was lucky my wake up call hadn’t been him ashing his cigarette down my bra instead.)

Unfortunately, I am the same way when it comes to their emotional changes: often I catch myself thinking things like “Clementine will never eat that; she’s too picky of an eater,” or “Clyde isn’t interested in girls yet,” and then I’ll catch myself and remember that I need to reassess my assumptions—that I’ve just turned my own internal clock back to “day before yesterday” again.

When they were younger I would track their physical growth on door jambs, marking each new inch off in black Sharpie as a way to remind myself that they were getting bigger every day. It kind of worked: or at least it always amazed me. Maybe what I should do is set up a system for doing the same thing for personal growth as well. Of course, the problem with that is: where would I ever find a doorway tall enough to hold all of the changes a person goes through from the time they are born until they turn eighteen?

When I first started writing this week’s column I thought it was going to be about my daughter, Clementine, getting her driver’s permit. One of those, “Look out! The girl who is stymied by the geometry of folding a t-shirt is about to learn how to parallel park!” type things. And I may still write that column one day. After all, getting your driver’s license is, for most Americans, as much of a rite of passage as graduating from high school or getting arrested for the first time (or maybe that’s just my family.)

However, as it turns out I was completely wrong about what type of experience getting her learner’s permit would be for Clementine. Yes, it was a rite of passage. And yes, it was a necessary step on her road to adulthood, but not in the way I thought it would be. Here’s the thing: I thought this particular rite of passage would be all about learning following distances and other difficult but necessary rules, but instead it was about something completely different. It was about how to deal with bureaucracy: specifically, how to deal with the people who have been working in a bureaucracy for so long that their souls have been sucked up inside the little machine that issues the numbers.

You’re probably rolling your eyes as you’re reading this. “What?” you’re saying. “You had an unpleasant experience at the DMV? How unique.” But to tell you the truth, this really was my first truly unpleasant experience there. (I’m not counting the time I had to explain that the ’79 Pinto I owned wasn’t insured because it had grass growing up through the floor boards. To be fair, I was the moron in that exchange.)

On my most recent encounter, however, the problem wasn’t so much that I was a moron, as that I was under the mistaken impression that a passport, original birth certificate and school ID was enough proof of citizenship to get a driver’s license. I mean, you can become President of the United States with less, right? Still, I was wrong, and so, like the majority of people who had been in line in front of me, was sent home to get even more proof of citizenship. This was the moment when Clementine got her first real lesson on the perils bureaucracy.

“You know,” the nameless woman behind the desk said to Clementine. (Nameless at least as far as she knew: apparently unknown to her, some previously disgruntled client had scratched a name into the “Welcome” plaque on her desk. I don’t, however, think that it was her given name—unless her parents had a wicked sense of humor.) “If you had read the entire study guide, like you were supposed to, then you would have known what forms of identification to bring.”

I considered pointing out to her that her job title was “Customer Service” and not “Customer Chastisement.” I considered telling her that personal commentary of that sort was best saved until she got home, when she could tell her sixteen cats all about it. I considered asking her if she had been born bitter, or if it was only something that happened once she got really old. I considered all of these things, and then bit my tongue and turned away, took Clementine back home and located the rest of the documents (luckily, a sworn statement from the Hawaiian Secretary of State wasn’t involved—this time).

“Wow,” said Clementine as we left. “What a (name scratched on ‘Welcome” plaque).”

“Yes,” I agreed. “And you’re going to meet her (or her twin) at least once a year for the rest of your life. Welcome to adulthood. Now let’s hurry back so we can take another number before they close.”

I used to feel guilty whenever I bought a frozen pizza for my kids. Not because of the cost (I only ever buy them on sale), and not because of the nutritional value (I consider a pizza to be one of the most balanced meals around: carbohydrates from the crust, protein from the pepperoni, calcium from the cheese, lycopene from the tomato sauce, fiber from the—well, who needs fiber, anyway?). No, the reason I felt guilty about buying a frozen pizza is that since I know very well how to make both pizza dough and pizza sauce, somehow, by not putting these skills to use, I thought that I was being a neglectful mother.

I didn’t entirely come to this conclusion on my own, of course: over the years countless TV shows, magazine articles and even websites had all told me—in subtle and not-so-subtle ways—that the only “real” way to have dinner with your family is to sit around a “real” table that has been set with “real” plates and “real” silverware and eat “real” food. (“Real” in the latter case meaning made from scratch: conceivably the table and plates can be store-bought, in a pinch, but a real mother probably would have made them, too).

For the first few years after my daughter was born I believed this with all my heart: it didn’t matter that the actors on the TV shows were all happily eating a catered dinner separately in their trailers, or that the magazine articles and websites were all probably written either by someone who had never spent more than five minutes with a child or who had kept their own children at bay with uncooked ramen while they trying to meet their deadline: I was convinced that if I didn’t serve a proper meal, in a proper location, at a proper time, well, then, my kids would grow up to be drug addicts, serial killers, or worse. (“Tell me, son: how did you get into conservative talk radio?” “Well, you see, there was this frozen pizza…”) And then, one day, I read an article that not only threatened doom upon the family that didn’t cook and eat together, but even went so far as to suggest that buying products like pre-washed lettuce and shredded cheese was nearly as bad as feeding your kids fast food in the back seat of a Buick—that by denying your family the chance to “go through the process” of cooking together, you were denying them the true benefits of a home-cooked meal.

And I thought, “Bite me.”

Look: the idea that there there is only one “right” way to raise your kids is both ludicrous and limiting: in my own case I know for a fact that my mother and I spent more quality time tubing down the Salt River together—where our “table” was made of water and “balanced meal” meant that the ice chest full of fried chicken fit perfectly inside its own tube—than we ever did eating an ordinary home-cooked meal at our perfectly normal dining room table back home.

Just as you can never possibly understand the dynamics of a particular romantic relationship unless you are in it, you can also never really understand how another family works unless you are a member of that family. So while it may be true for one family that the key to their success is to sit around a dinner table together eating their home-cooked meal (with cheese that they shredded all by themselves, after making it six months earlier with milk from their own cows), another family might experience the most bonding while waiting in line together at Starbucks. Or tubing down the Salt.

Or maybe even waiting for that frozen pizza to cook.

When I was in Thailand on my honeymoon, I went souvenir shopping at an antiques market in Bangkok. Since I was determined not to be the type of traveller who needs a small army to carry her bags, I was very particular about the sort of “souvenirs” I would allow myself to buy—nothing large or unwieldy, and nothing breakable. With this in mind it was easy to pass up the ornate birdcages and hand-carved teak sofas and content myself with looking at the smaller trinkets and pieces of jewelry. Until I saw the fish platter.

I don’t know if it was actually meant to serve fish, but it was big enough to serve an entire stream full of trout. I called it “the fish platter” both because of its size and because of the fact that it had a subtle fish pattern painted directly into the light green glaze: it was an incredible example of traditional Thai celadon pottery. It was also enormous, and delicate, and expensive (relatively expensive—at sixty dollars it was our entire daily budget and then some). And so I did the reasonable thing, the prudent thing, the smart thing, and I left it there in Bangkok and came back home.

Where I have thought about my fish platter, with regret, ever since.

I tell the story of the fish platter when I am trying to explain why I don’t always do the sensible thing, and why I sometimes encourage the same lack of sensibility in my children. Take, for example, the subject of student loans. While many parents (and teachers and counselors) tell their kids (and mine, too) about the evils of student loans, and about the importance of graduating not only without debt, but with a degree that can be converted into a high-paying job as quickly as possible, I have taken the opposite tack.

“Oh, so instead of getting your degree in web design at a local college you want to study turn of the century Parisian gender equality issues? With a double major in underwater archaeology? At a private liberal arts college that costs thirty grand a year? Great! I’m sure there’s a scholarship for that somewhere, and for the rest, well, there’s always student loans.”

I know that this might seem odd coming from someone who is so cheap they have steadfastly refused to buy band-aids for the last twenty years (if it’s bad enough to require a band-aid—by which I generally mean spouting arterial blood—then you should probably go to the hospital, at which point they will certainly put a band-aid on it themselves.) However, my reasoning behind encouraging my children to study whatever it is that strikes their fancy in college (and to borrow money to do it, if necessary) is actually based on my cheapness, so in a strange way it all makes sense. Here’s the thing: although it might cost you a hundred grand (or more) to follow your passion in school, the benefits of actually finding something you are passionate about is, in my opinion, priceless beyond measure. And when you think about it, isn’t finding our passion the reason why we go to school in the first place? I mean, go to school beyond learning the basics of how to read, write, and understand DNA evidence well enough to be a useful member of a jury.

I know that I am in the minority here, but I firmly believe that the primary purpose of going to college is not to be able to find a job, but rather to be able to find yourself. (We go not to find the value of x, but rather to find the value of us.) And, like finding anything that’s lost, sometimes you have to look in the strangest of places.

Places like underwater archaeology seminars. At thirty grand a year.

While there are many lines from “Spinal Tap” that are quoted in my house, the line that is quoted the most often has to be, “There’s a fine line between stupid and clever.” We use it mostly when we want to comment on one of the pithy pronouncements that are so often made by the teenagers who drift in and out our house, pronouncements along the lines of, “Work is hard.” (That’s why they call it “work,” son). Or, my personal favorite, “School is for idiots.” (Yes, it is…that’s why we sent you there.)

Until recently, I was quite content with this line; in many ways it was (and still is) the perfect way to explain the teenage years, the perfect summation of that period of time when you are smart enough to realize that everyone around you—teachers, parents, cops—is not as smart as you once thought they were, but not yet clever enough to realize that you, too, fit into that “Dumber than originally anticipated” category. It was short, to the point, and, all too often, could be delivered in a bad British accent. What more could you want from a phrase? Well, as it turns out, the more that I wanted was actually a less, because, as I learned recently, there is a phrase that sums up the teenage experience so much more succinctly (in a quarter of the words, no less), and, better yet, can be delivered in a bad French accent. The phrase I’m referring to is l’age ingrat.

Of course it’s French: what is it about other languages that makes them so adept at coming up with a single phrase that so perfectly describes a unique situation? Think about it: the Germans have kummelspeck (“the weight you gain from unhappy eating”—literally “grief bacon”) and the Rapa Nui have tingo (to borrow from someone repeatedly until they have nothing left). I suppose it’s true that sometimes we do manage to come up with the perfect words in English, too: consider for a moment poogle, a word that describes the act of accessing the internet (usually via smartphone) while you are using the toilet. But still, when it comes to turning the perfect phrase, I think we have to bow down to other languages quite often. Like with l’age ingrat.

I wasn’t able to find an exact translation for l’age ingrat online—the closest I could find were guesses that it was derived from either “ungracious,” “ungrateful,” or a combination of the two; this is actually even better than an exact definition, because those two words, both together and apart, describe nearly every teenager I know perfectly. Asking native French speakers was no more of a help: although they all knew what I was saying (after correcting my pronunciation), they were at a loss to give an exact meaning, other than saying, “it is that age, that awkward, obnoxious, helpless, arrogant, childish, grow-up age. You know: the teenage years.”

And I did know. Maybe that’s why we don’t have a word to describe it: all we really need to say is teenager, and instantly everyone knows what we are talking about. Still, sometimes the word fails to convey exactly what we mean. We say “teenagers,” and people hear “annoying,” but what we really meant was “teenager” in the “unhappy, miserable” sense.

Perhaps what we really need is to have a tonal language, where nuances like that can be expressed with a rising or falling accent. (Although, if you’ve ever listened to a mother asking her nearly grown child to “STOP leaving your wet TOWEL on the FLOOR!” then you know we have something of a tonal language already.)

Unfortunately, another part of “l’age ingrat” is the ability to be completely tone deaf—at least where parents are concerned.

The other day my friend Dwayne posted a YouTube video of a song called “This Is How You Load a Dishwasher.” It was a catchy little song, and so it was no surprise to me that it was still in my head a few days later when I had the rare chance to watch my daughter, Clementine, load our very own dishwasher. I started singing it in my head when she first opened the dishwasher door, and then, as things so often do with kids, reality set in. Loudly, and harshly.

If the YouTube version of “This Is How You Load a Dishwasher” had been Mozart, Clementine’s would have been Wagner. If the YouTube version had been Captain and Teneille, Clementine’s would have been Throbbing Gristle. If the YouTube version had been Justin Bieber, Clementine’s would have been Marilyn Manson.

You get the idea.

Slam! Crash ! Slam some more!

In the YouTube version the guy sang things like “put the light stuff on the top, and the heavy stuff on the bottom.” In Clementine’s version (when the crunchy guitar allowed for any vocals at all) it was, “put the bowls full of petrified refried beans in sideways, so that the water jets can’t reach them.” The YouTube version: “put tall things down below.” Clementine’s version: “Make sure the arms can’t spin.” YouTube: “Fill it all the way up, to save water and energy.” Clementine’s: “Go ahead. Wash one cup: it’s your favorite.”

The YouTube version, I noticed, also failed to contain anything other than singing and guitar; Clementine’s version, on the other hand, was wonderfully counterbalanced with crashing, sighing, and no less than seven heavy groans. To be honest, his was a ditty; hers was a full-on symphony. This became even more apparent to me when I got to witness the sequel to Clementine’s version of “This is How You Load a Dishwasher,” entitled, appropriately enough, “This is How You Unload a Dishwasher.”

Unlike other sophomore efforts, Clementine’s second album far outstripped the first, especially when it came to the lyrics. Of special interest was the way the lyrics of the first album neatly segued into the lyrics of the second: “make sure the arms can’t spin,” became into “this dishwasher sucks,” and “fill it all the way up” morphed into “why can’t we just get a new one?” all sung in tones of the lowest melancholy. It was almost like the “Unplugged” version of the first one. (“Unloaded,” perhaps?)

In the meantime, just to keep current, I’m thinking about releasing my own dish-themed single. It will be called called, “Stop Putting Dirty Dishes Back in the Cupboard,” with the B-side being “You Need to Scrape the Dishes First (NO Dishwasher Can Wash a T-Bone)”. I’m anticipating that there will be a response, much like the back and forth between Bob Dylan and Joan Baez on their albums of the 70s. (Side note: please don’t let me be the Joan Baez.)

I can already imagine her response, and in fact, have an inkling of the working title of the new album: “Why Do We Even Have A Dishwasher If We Have to Wash All of the Dishes First?” I’m expecting it to be something completely different from her first two—more of an Irish-style lament with punk undertones. I’ve also heard rumors about her performing it on “Saturday Night Live,” and in the middle of the set tearing a picture of the Maytag man in half, but that might just be internet scuttlebutt.

Still, I’m sure it will be nothing if not an exciting show.