dishes

There were the little differences that I noticed at the neighbor's house.
That little scrubby sponge that they used to wash dishes. They used Ivory Flakes and perhaps their water was softer too and that would explain the excess of fine foamy bubbles. The suds would foam up through the fine pored sponge. It felt so different from the terry cloth washcloth and detergent we used at home.
 I would beg to have them let me wash dishes. At home it was said that I kept the dishwater warm with my tears. It wasn't until I was a pre-teen that I figured out the perfect routine for washing the dishes for our family of seven on my assigned Saturday night.
The black & white portable TV would be set up on the kitchen counter with the detective show "Mannix" on. I was allowed to stay up until 10:00 on a Saturday night. I would languish over the dishes until my hands were suitably pruney and at the end pick at the softened calluses on my hands, scraping away the dead skin with the sharpest paring knife.
 Usually the next morning I would be in some sort of trouble for leaving a scuzzy sink load of undrained water or ignoring the impossible to scour broiler pan on the opposite counter.
 You would think that my mother would have appreciated my baking endeavors as well but with the rogue mixer spattering the walls like a Pollock painting and the scrim of flour ringing the outer reaches of the counter she hardly thought my treats were worth the mess.