Wouldn’t it wonderful? If a humanoid robot would keep my house spotlessly clean. A C-3PO that would end, in a jiffy, this vicious circle: “a flesh- and- blood cleaning lady comes to your home, cleans what is in plain sight, leaves you in the lurch and you will never know why, so back to square one”. A dead-end street, the same never ending story, the home help version of Groundhog Day.
The curse of the cleaners: that is my fate. Cleaning, like any other activity, either physical or intellectual, requires effort and know-how. Do you think anybody can clean well? IF SO, YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY WRONG!!! How I hate those people who tend to undervalue a task just because they think it is of little importance! A person who studies to be a state attorney will surely like to have a clean table with everything in its place, all his/her studying supplies kept in mint condition. Sometime during the day he or she will surely eat, I guess, and will want to do it on clean dishes and find all sticky residues scraped off the glass cooktop, won’t he/she? And he/she most surely will want a spotless toilet, with no feces and urine stains, won’t he/she?
I need to paraphrase my beloved RAPHAEL, the singer, (although Rocío Jurado, Spain’s greatest, also used to sing it), changing the lyrics a little bit (you add the music):
“THE WAY I CLEAN x2
BETTER BELIEVE IT x2
NOBODY WILL CLEAN
THE WAY I CLEAN x2
BETTER FORGET IT x2
NOBODY WILL CLEAN x2
NOBODY, BECAUSE …
I CLEAN WITH THE FORCE OF THE SEAS,
I CLEAN WITH THE VEHEMENCE OF THE WIND
I CLEAN THROUGH DISTANCE AND THROUGH TIME
I CLEAN WITH MY SOUL AND WITH MY FLESH…”
Now that I have made this point clear, that you are the only person who can do a really great cleaning job in your home, I defend the thesis that when you have little time and/or poor health to do a thorough cleaning of your house, and to top it all you are a neat freak born, you really need to hire others to clean for you, whether you like it or not. In doing so, you will become more dependent on a bunch of human beings you have never met or seen before. You give them due respect and consideration, and you pay them the amount of money they ask. In return, you just ask them to fulfill their part of the contract, usually verbal. But it is all the same: you will never know what they are thinking in their minds or when they will leave you without any advance notice. One day they just send you a WhatsApp message saying that they won’t work for you anymore. It happens time after time. Oh, how right Mr. Nietzsche was when he spoke about the eternal return!
I bet my neck that he came up with this theory the day his maid deserted him. If he had had no choice but to make his bed, do the washing up and the dusting and wash his own clothes, he wouldn’t have given birth to those ideas of the death of God and his superman. How time-consuming domestic chores are! Thus, I show you that behind every great man there is always a GREAT CLEANING LADY.
I need, I long for, I cry out for, I request, I beg that and android may be sold, one that would be very glad to be of service cleaning my house. I would give him the right orders, punching the buttons on the computer placed on his back, like a vintage battery-operated doll. This Andrew, this bicentennial man, would be another member of my family, with his perfect diction, impeccable manners and vast knowledge of everything.
My furniture might as well be licked, so clean it would be! The dream of every obsessive neat freak! AND BREAKING NOTHING!
I was born too soon. I want to go back to the future.