The sink.

The sink is a very dangerous place when more than one person uses it. The kitchen sink inspired this, but the bathroom sink can also be treacherous.

The bathroom sink has excess toothpaste staining the edges, spit, bits of facial hair if a man uses it, and oh hell, long hair. The hair that goes down in the sink, wraps around the plug, and clogs the drain. Then the rest of the filth that goes through the sink gets stuck in the hair, so that removing it is the most disgusting, vomit-inducing experience to be forced upon you. Let us not speak of it any more.

Oh, but the kitchen sink. Ohhhhh, no. People insist, they insist on not rincing their dishes. they leave all manner of food, sitting in the wet sink, with the wet dishes, piled on top of each other, filled with filthy water. And when it is your job to clean the dishes (and it is usually my job, though I take it with pride, since I trust few to clean properly), you have to reach your finger down, with much fear and anticipation.. and you reach for the bottom plate, with much care to not actually get the water onto that poor finger.. and you, very carefully, tip the plate in the opposite direction.

If you are lucky, your finger will be untouched. Most often, though, you are not lucky. When you are unlucky, at best, only a small bit of the water leaks onto your finger, with no pieces of egg or pasta or bread or rice or mayonaise or chicken or beef or tomato or cereal or or or... In the worst case, when you tilt the plate, it falls instead toward you, and all of the bowls and mugs topple onto your hand, and all of the sludge with its foul smell and oh no no no. Actually, what would make this even worse would be if the plates broke and the shards were to drive their way into your arm and some more would bounce into your eye, blinding you, making you unable to clean yourself and find the invading - as I write this, I take breaks to life my hands from the keyboard, flail them around, cover my eyes, and whimper "No! Make it stop!" - pieces of.. no no no, make it stop!

Oh, and then you die.

So now the liquid is out. And you must wash the dishes or put them in the dish-washer if you are lucky enough to possess such a thing. (I am.) Either way, you will have to remove the obvious filth that stands out from the plate. The egg yolk that has been smeared all over the plate, the bigs of cereal that have cemented themselves to the bowls, the soggy bread that smells like all the garbage in the world.

If you are to wash the dishes by hand, you have to use a wash cloth or a sponge. This is a new level of disgust. You thought the bread smelled bad? The milk? This wash cloth has touched those things, and so much more. It has soaked in slime, and relished in doing so. You don't smell this out right. No, do you know what you do? You, being an absolute idiot, pick it up and put it to your nose to see if you need to get a new one.

And then you vomit into the sink.

But you can't tell the difference between the vomit and everything else that is in there, so I suppose all is somewhat well.

After you throw the wash cloth as far from you as possible and scald your hands in boiling water, you get a new wash cloth and go on the terrible mission of cleaning the plates. I need not go back to the egg stains and the cereal cement.

If you wash your dishes in the dish-washer, be prepared to find still some bits of food on the plates when it is done, overturned containers (Ohhh, I forgot to mention the containers. You know, when people close them and put them in the sink, even though they still have food inside? Perhaps my most hated thing.) have some of the water from the dishwater with some of the food from the dishes inside. You don't want to wash these by hand, so you turn them over and keep them in the dishwasher, with hope that next time they will stay in the correct posistion. And in the end, the dishes most often smell like wet dog.

But back to the sink. Now that the sink is empty of dishes, you still have the remains of the food and filth left in the basin. you turn the water all the up, and to maximum heat, grab that little squirty thing, if you are luck enough to possess such a thing (I am.), and spray the hell out of that bastard. And, of course, not everything is gone, so you have to wipe it down by hand with your trusty wash-cloth.

There. You are done. For now. But you can't take your eyes off the sink, because next time you look, there will somehow be even more dishes, even more filth, and you will realize that you are, indeed, doomed.