I’ve been witness to the phenomenon in the cities and the country and I’ve come to conclude our greatest untapped source of natural clean energy is cleaner energy. I’m talking about all the energy that is created and spent by people obsessed with cleaning things that are already perfectly clean.
Cleaner energy is all the time, strategizing and horse power anal retentive home owners expend on cleaning items and spaces that are already clean and will look indistinguishably different after more furious cleaning activity.
I was making small talk with some friends last week and I asked about their weekend plans. She mentioned a visit to a destination restaurant, a movie and then, her voice rising an octave intoned, “And then we’re going to give the whole house a really good cleaning. We’re going to start in the living room. We’ll dust, vacuum and wax. Then it’s down the hall …”
As she said this, she looked like I remember Gen. Patton looking as he told reporters how he was going to take Salerno back from the Nazis.
I gave her an evaluating look. Not a hair was out of place. Nice smile. Impeccable makeup. This pretty woman was not the kind of person who’d ever even enter, much less reside, in an unkempt house.
Then I glanced over at the husband. I noted the stress-related baldness. Nervous twitch and a pleading look toward the bartender to pour something down his throt that would spare him his fate.
In short, he looked like one of the soldiers Patton ordered to take back a key Salerno bridge armed with only a feather duster and a can of Pledge furniture polish.
I’ve seen that desperate, forlorn look on men like him a thousand times.
In the mirror!
It may be sexist, but the condition does seem to be more aggressive in the female of the species. I addressed this in a parallel observation years ago:
“Women look into mirrors and see flaws … no one else can detect.
“Men look into those same mirrors and see perfection … no one else can detect.”
We need to harness and convert all the energy these subjects spend on cleaning and turn it into fuel, fuel to heat and light our homes.
And what happens if these alterations in adherent cleaning priorities fail to catch on? What happens if the lights begin to dim?
Even better.
It’s much harder to spot a fleck of dust in a room that’s poorly illuminated.
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