Since we spent time every day washing dishes, it became natural for the dish line to become an entertainment center. In addition to ‘Rake the Dish Pit’, it became a running joke that somebody was going to get tossed into the pit. One time, Dewey did accidentally fall into it. He was like a cat falling into a bathtub. As soon as he hit the water, he was scrambling to get out. He looked…and smelled…a mess for having only been in the waste water for an instant. Spaghetti-red grease clung to his clothes. It took him a long time to clean up after that one.
Glen kept claiming that he would voluntarily jump into the dish pit…if somebody paid him enough. The offer was tempting. His description of himself at orientation was “I am an asshole.” He was true to his word throughout the season. Okay…he was usually an ‘asshole’ in the lovable, endearing sense, but it could grate on your nerves once in a while. He said “Every one of you guys would love to see me in the dish pit and you know it!” At first he said he would jump into the dish pit for two hundred dollars. There were no takers. His price kept dropping every week or two, twenty bucks at a time, but he still couldn’t find any takers.
The dish line was a popular place for trivia games. Music trivia was the most popular, as were astronomy and the natural sciences. Oddly enough, we didn’t have too many sports nuts on this crew, so sports were not a big topic.
We had our share of horseplay in the dish line, too. The most irritating thing for me was splashing each other with dish water. This was usually done under the pretense of being an ‘accident’. One day Vic was using tongs to move dishes from the hot water rinse to the cold water rinse. I was on Vic’s right, moving the dishes from the cold water rinse to the drain board. Dishes started ‘slipping’ out of Vic’s tongs into the cold water rinse, splashing water on me and the drain board. After the fourth or fifth time, I said, “Hey, c’mon, Vic. It was funny the first three times. You can knock it off now.”
Vic looked me square in the eye, grinning, and dropped the next cup into the rinse water. I said nothing.
Vic added a little velocity to the next cup, throwing it into the rinse water and splashing two of us. I calmly said, “Vic…yer bein’ a dick.”
Judging from all of the “oooh”’s I heard, I think it was the first time most of the crew had heard me cuss.
But Vic stopped.
Three Years With the C's 