My Affair with Mr. Clean

By Sharie Derrickson

My husband and daughter are addicted to gadgets and cleaning products – in that they have this strange urge to just go out and buy them. It is some weird bonding ritual of which I am not included. If there is a newer or greater product that cleans, sweeps, dusts, or organizes, the two of them rush out and try and find it. Most of the time, they come home with some new cleaning or organizing gadget that is used once and then never touched again because it is lame.

On top of it all, they try and con me by telling me from the cel phone that, “they bought me something.” Not only did, “they buy me something,” but also they bought me something that I am really, really, really, really and going to just love. I then sit home all eager to find out what they bought me only to find out that they bought me a salad shooter. I hate salad. Frankly, I don’t see what people see in salads, let alone in something that shoots a salad. I don’t believe in making salads. I believe, that if you absolutely have to eat a salad, then you should buy one that comes in a bag. I have no desire to mess up my kitchen all in the name of health. Salads are a scam designed by kitchen gadget people who try to convince you that salads are good for you so you will buy their product.

So, they show me the salad shooter and I am supposed to get all weak-kneed over it like it is a diamond tiara or something. For crying out loud – it’s a machine that you put a cucumber in and it shoots it into a bowl – how exciting is that? Then, they expect me to cancel my plans for the day so that I can go out, buy some cucumbers, and then shoot them into a bowl. “No, sorry girls, I can’t go to lunch with you because my family and I are going to make a salad – from scratch – with my new salad shooter.”

Then, I have to tell them a tragic story. “You know, I once had a math teacher in high school who lost an eye using one of these. They’re treacherous machines – like lawn darts.”

“That’s a lie mom – you said it was a bow-hunting accident.”

“No, he went bow hunting and then went home to make a salad to have with his freshly-killed game, and the next thing you know, he shoots cucumber in his eye. I never liked math or salads after that,” I said with a shiver. “I had nightmares about it for a month.”

And the salad shooter is just one of the many things they drag home that I am suppose to get all goodie goodie about. I have this spin thing you put plastic ware into. “Oooooo. Look at this,” my husband says. “It spins.”

“It’s plastic ware. Why does it need to spin?”

“Because you just turn this carousel around in circles and you can grab the different size plastic ware.”

“It’s plastic ware – I still don’t see why it needs to spin.”

“It saves space.”

“Space for what? The recharger for the steak knives? The solar-powered juicer?”

“Come here and look – see – it spins. It spins this way – it spins that way – you can pull it out and it spins – and it even spins if you put it in a drawer.”

“But I still don’t see why it needs to spin? Make it stop spinning, and I will try and like it. Until then, I don’t want it in my kitchen. It’s too weird.”

The same thing went for the wet-dry floor mopper with the heat and massage grip handle, the battery-powered bug sucker and cobweb remover, the magnetic light bulb cleaner. In short, I have had little use for any of the products they have brought home because I believed that nothing is ever what it is cracked up to be – that is, until last weekend when my family brought home the most marvelous invention of all time – the “Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.”

Now, I know it is a little out of my journalism realm to do product endorsements. That would be a set a bad precedent because before you know it, everyone would want me to do a product endorsement, and I am just too busy for all of that. I have columns to write, a family to take care of, government meetings to attend, and reality television to keep up with, but, mostly, I am busy using my new Magic Eraser. I can’t get enough of this thing. It’s addicting. I’m telling you, I really don’t think putting people in space is all that big of a deal compared to my new sponge. So what if we can build a big space ship out of aluminum foil and then shoot it into the cosmos so that someday, when I am dead and gone, we can colonize Mars and plunder it for its natural resources. Is that going to get the grime off of my kitchen cupboards? No. I don’t think so. But, for once, science has come up with something that makes my life easier.

I know – science is, all in all, a good thing and has brought us some pretty neat stuff like Tang, memory foam, and long-lasting lipstick, but really, outside of those, not much else has made my life any easier or more pleasant. Science has also given us some pretty stupid stuff like cellophane and sneakers that light up. But, oo-la-la, this new sponge can’t be beat.

At first, I was a skeptic when my husband and daughter came home so excited. “We bought you something and we think you are really going to love it.”

“Does it spin?”

“No.”

“Okay then. Let’s see it.” They then pulled out the sponge.

“Great. You bought me a sponge because nothing says ‘I love you’ more than a sponge.”

“Come on mom, just give it a try.”

I said to myself, ‘Watch this – I’ll pick the most grimy thing,” which, of course, is that seal that goes around your refrigerator that somehow, and I have never quite figured it out even after setting up a time-lapse camera, gets so yucky that you need a tetanus shot every time you open the fridge.

I opened the box, put a little hot water on the sponge, and what do you know but that sponge actually took off years of gross. “Okay, so it works on fridge seals, but, will it remove the dingy stuff around the doorknobs? I think not,” I said, like the know-it-all I am. In seconds, the gunk was gone. I scowled. “Alright then. So it works on that, but, and here is the real test – what about all that dirt stuff on the kitchen cupboards?”

I never understand how the doors of kitchen cupboards get dirty. You wash a dish, you dry the dish, then you put it away, and in the process, your cupboard doors end up covered in sticky dirt. Where does the sticky dirt come from? Is my family getting up in the middle of the night and rubbing sticky dirt on the cupboards just to make me crazy so they can have me locked up?

Remember that Betty Davis movie where the family tried to drive the mother mad by making her think she was hearing things, and then they got her committed to a mental institution, when all along it was just part of an evil plan to get to her money? Is it like that only, instead of my money, my family wants the television remote?

Well, any way, this sponge sent me on a cleaning frenzy. All my conversations somehow end up touting the greatness of this sponge. I dream about it. I can’t wait to make a mess just so I can use it. I am actually glad that my family is getting up in the middle of the night to put sticky dirt on my cupboards to drive me insane to that they can declare me incompetent and have me locked up – think of all the places I could use the sponge in an insane asylum.

And, the very best thing about the sponge is that it cleans up blood. I told them that the salad shooter was dangerous, but would they listen to me? Noooooo. Then came the nightmares. For the past few nights, Mr. Clean has been chasing me with a salad shooter but he’s wearing an eye patch. You know guys, maybe the nut house isn’t such a bad idea after all.

© 2006 Sharie Derrickson. Previously printed in the Thousand Islands Sun.

Playing the Name Game

By Shirley/Shelly/Shane Dickerson
AKA Sharie Derrickson

My whole life, no one has ever gotten my name right. I was born Sharie Dawn Calhoun, and legend has it, I was named, rather auspiciously I must add, after two Frankie Valli songs; “Sherry,” and “Dawn,” although this has been widely disputed by Frankie Valli experts who I know. It seems that, while the song “Sherry” was, indeed, a number one hit in 1962, the year I was born, the song “Dawn” was not on the airwaves until 1963. It has long been speculated by people in my family who like to speculate, that my father, who chose my name, knew Frankie Valli and was given a heads-up about the song “Dawn.”

As I said, this is mere speculation of the part of people, mainly me. It makes me wonder if maybe both songs were named after me, and not the other way around. Anyway, I am now cosmically tied to Frankie Valli for life and am driven to buy his albums, to watch “Grease” over and over, and to walk around the house singing my own name in a falsetto voice. To some extent, my name is a curse because those two songs often get stuck in my head for days at a time.

So, anyway, even though I have two names that were, at one time, top ten hits, no one seems to get not only my first name right, but my last name also. I became used to all of the ways my name could be misspoken or miswritten. Even my first set of my Navy enlistment papers were wrong – Chevy Cowhoun. Now, I ask you, do I look like a Chevy Cowhoun? I mean, really. (Sidebar: If I do look like a Chevy Cowhoun, please don’t tell me, okay.)

I try and keep positive, and whenever anyone butchers my name, I tell my self it could be worse. I could be named George Foreman number 15, Blanket Jackson or John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt – I guess I can live with Chevy Cowhoun.

When I my husband proposed, I was real glad. Not just because I love him and all of that, but because I would become Sharie Derrickson, which I think sounds pretty author-ish, although I think my name would be way cooler if it were Countess Sharie Von Derrickson.
I was so excited. I marched down the aisle thinking to myself, “Yippee, no more Chevy Cowhoun. Yaaaay.”

Then, the minister turned to the audience and said, “May I present to you, Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Dickerson.”

“That’s not our name,” I snapped.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “I mean Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Dickerson.”

“Still not right,” I said. “Look at the paperwork.”

“Okay, got it now,” he said, smiling. “May I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Derkerson.”

“Whatever,” I said, scowling.

And that’s the way it has been for more than 17 years. Here is a partial list of names I now answer to:

Shelly Dickinson
Charles Dickens
Sharon Dorkerson
Cheryl Deckerson
Leif Erickson
Sally Sickenson
Susie Simpleton
Sonny Bonoson
and, Mom.

My husband responds to:

Tom Derelictson
Tad Dummyson
Troy DaVinci-son
Tim Erlickson
Ted Kazinskison
The guy who carries her luggage,
and, Dad.

But, most who get our name wrong call us Tom and Shane Dickerson, and, we used to correct people, but we stopped doing that a long time ago. Now, if the UPS man comes and says, “Is this the address for Tom and Shane Dickerson?” we both just say, “Sure. Why not.”

My daughter is even in on it. Last year, we took her to a store that sold those little key chains and told her to pick out a new name. “Look, it’s about time that you picked your own name – what do you want people to call you when they get your name wrong?”

“Rhonda,” she said.

“Rhonda it is,” we said, grabbing the key chain. We then had a great bonding moment when we hugged, looking at our new key chains with the names Tom, Shane, and Rhonda on them.

So, I guess the point of the story is, we give up. Call us what you will. We don’t care anymore because, as Shakespeare said, "What's in a name? That which we call a roseby any other word would smell as sweet,” – even if you call me Shirley Cowpie or Shelly Stinkerson. I’m not going to let it get under my skin, and in the immortal words of my cosmic Godfather, Frankie Valli, “Big girls don’t cry.” Sing it Frankie. Everybody now. . . “Sha-a-a-aa-a-rie Ba-by.” Oh, man, I’m gunna have trouble getting THAT out of my head now. Thanks a lot.

© 2006 Sharie Derrickson. Previously printed in the Thousand Islands Sun.