Exorcising The Children When The Washing Machine Goes Walkabout
The Sunday Age
Sunday April 30, 2000
I AM ashamed to say that our only link with the hereafter is a haunted washing machine. Naturally, our plutocrat neighbors have the very latest in technology - bleeding walls, interdimensional vortexes - but we're traditionalists, aka poor. If our kids want to paddle in an interdimensional vortex, the neighbors have a splendid marble-tiled one, complete with safety fence.
No, all we can boast is an eldritch Malleys Whirlpool. When Paranormal Cycle is selected, it totters around the laundry like a deranged Dalek, and makes disdainful rumbling noises. Though currently safely tethered to the taps by its umbilical hoses, we fear one day it may break free and totter round the house, rumbling disdainfully at our taste in clothes and sneering at our record collection.
We're convinced the washing machine's affliction is supernatural because a succession of repairmen named Trevor have told us, for $80 apiece, that they have never seen the like in their earthly experience. If we were Catholic, we'd probably engage one of those hotshot exorcists, but as we are, at best, lukewarm pagans, we do not have that option. We could certainly hire Anglican exorcists, but they couldn't cow a spectral mouse.
So one must improvise. As well as a washing machine, we have in our possession two infant girls. These exquisite creatures share but one flaw, the inability to amuse themselves in their quality time. Though lavishly provided with edifying literature (Elmore Leonard, Gray's Anatomy) and superior art materials (Play-Do, Carrara marble), seldom do they let a day pass without observing, in strident soprano tones, that There's Nothing To Do!
As their idea of Something To Do always involves chocolate and expensive rides on nausea-inducing machinery, I usually find it useful to feign deafness or deep preoccupation during these outbursts. Cowardly behavior, I'll admit, but I exhausted all the parent-child entertainment options years ago. Five-card stud loses its lustre once their piggy-banks are empty.
Yet, once in a rare while, Divine Inspiration strikes. It happened on one of those cotton-wool drizzling Melbourne days that are suitable only for quiet indoors contemplation or the dour certainties of football. The washing machine, as usual, was throwing its weight around in the laundry. The children, tiring of their piecework, were loudly demanding amusement. Father, as usual, was nonplussed.
I do not know what possessed me to place the smaller, lighter child on top of the washing machine, whimsy perhaps, but this action seemed to immediately soothe the demon within. Instead of stamping around like Godzilla, it moderated its gait to a soft-shoe shuffle worthy of the late Mr Astaire. The addition of a second child made it even more tractable - it rocked gently, like a carousel horse. Eureka!
(Social workers note - I did not put my children in the washing machine. I placed them very gently on top of the washing machine. I'd just like to make that absolutely clear.)
Not only were the children delighted by this experience, we parents gained useful leverage. ``Of course, you can sit on the washing machine! Just tidy up your room first!" ``Yes, that spinach may well look like a bovine by-product, but you can't sit on the washing machine until you eat it!" Other parents soon caught wind of our good fortune, and for a small consideration ($1 per minute) we allowed their children to be possessed as well.
By these means we managed to raise the capital for a new stainless steel machine of impeccable European pedigree. Yes, it's very efficient, very quiet and rarely wanders. But it doesn't move me, really. It has no spirit.
© 2000 The Sunday Age