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Lest I give the impression I don’t know noon from the middle of the day, I want to say upfront that I am familiar with the technology affectionately known as “dishwasher.” Many times, I have loaded, run, and unloaded a dishwasher without having to reference the manual. Yes, I have skills. During my first time living as a bachelor, I either had no dishes worthy of a dishwasher, or no dishwasher. But when I bought my own dishwasher (with attached house) and acquired enough kitchenware to fill a dishwasher, I called my all-knowing, all-caring, Mahha Mom for her professional opinion of what goo (or goop, depending upon your upbringing) that I should get for my dishwasher. She recommended a brand, which will remain unnamed until they offer me money to advertise for them (yes, Palmolive, you should give me money).

I found several flavors of the dish goop, so I took my time to decide which one smelled the least feminine. This is important to a bachelor. There can be nothing worse than watching a 100%-guy movie with lots of explosions, and then one of the guys asks out loud, “Who smells like … lavender?” So I picked a flavor that would avoid such awkwardness, bought a bottle, and brought it home; satisfied that it was, in fact, on sale too!

My dishes were already rinsed and waiting in the dishwasher for the holy goop to wash them of their uncleanness. I filled both compartments with the appropriate amount of the apple-flavored stuff, set the washer to the appropriate settings, and retired to my computer desk with a celebratory can of soda. I had accomplished much—I had proven my worth to this house, and my dominance over the lower intelligence known as dishwasher.

After about half an hour, I went upstairs to grab a snack from the kitchen, or maybe I was going to gloat over my success to the emptiness of the dining room. Whatever the case, I stepped into the kitchen, and immediately experienced a wonderful tingling sensation that made me swell up with pride—that is, until I realized that it was actually my socks that were swelling up with water. I looked down and saw a beautiful atmosphere of fluffy, white suds-clouds blanketing my floor. I mentally cataloged the different cloud types—mostly stratus and cumulus formations.

As enjoyable as this experience was, I knew that my dishwasher had no “clean my whole kitchen for me” setting. So I made another call to my personal expert.

In her very gracious and compassionate manner, she laughed at me and set me straight. My mistake? I had purchased dish soap rather than dishwasher detergent. Apparently, there is a difference. Those companies really should make the difference more obvious for people like me—bachelors, that is. In order to prevent future confusion, I recommended that the company relabel their dishwasher detergent as “stick this in your dishwasher” and their dish soap products as “This is not dishwasher detergent.” I’m still waiting for a reply. Maybe I would have heard back sooner if I hadn’t folded the letter up as a paper airplane and flown it through the clouds of my floor, which resulted in a unfortunate crash and several paper airplane men missing in action. Their paper families have been contacted.