Ask Dr. Chocolate

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and instances of grossness.

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

In the spirit of DIY, I’m going to make my own candy!  Do you have any pointers for the adventurous novice chocolatier?

Sandra M, Cheney, WA

Dear Sandy,

Don’t do it.  You might be a great cook, and heck, you might even be a great baker, but candy is really, really hard.  Just go buy some.  Seriously.

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

In a letter years ago, you said some very harsh things about carob.  In fact, if I remember correctly, you described it the way religious people write about Hell, or the way Berkeley liberals (i.e., Berkeley residents) talk about Trump.  Why?

Mark Hodges

Berkeley, CA

Dear Mark,

The problem with carob is that you don’t see it coming.  If I had my way, the FDA would require carob-infested products to glow bright green, like antifreeze, as a warning.  When I was a kid, my dad’s girlfriend made a batch of what she called “hypoglycemic fudge,” only she didn’t tell us that up front.  She just served it.  Slicing off a giant wedge, I found the consistency to be perfect under the knife.  My mouth was actually watering as I took a large bite.  Tooth-feel was exquisite and for a fraction of a second I thought it was perfect fudge—but then the flavor hit my tongue.  I couldn’t have been more stunned if it had been made with dog shit.  But I had to pretend to like it.  Carob is so bitter, and so was I.

Carob is one of those substitutes that falls so far short, it just reminds you what you’re missing.  It belongs in the Hall of Shame with such villainous products as microwave popcorn, Tang, Velveeta, powdered milk, soy cheese, and Tofutti.

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

Your syndicated column covers all kinds of candy, from caramels to fruit chews to chocolate fudge.  Why not call yourself Dr. Candy?

Louise R, Tempe, AZ

Dear Louise,

It’s simply because my last name really is Chocolate.  It has nothing to do with “Dr. Chocolate” having a nice ring to it, or with “Candy” sounding like the name of a porn star.  And no, I’m not kidding about my last name.  It’s right there on my birth certificate (though it’s spelled A-L-B-E-R-T).

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

I’m thinking it would be really fun to make homemade fudge with my teenage daughter!  Do you have a good recipe to share?

Emily M, Anaheim, CA

Dear Emily,

I get so many letters asking for recipes, I feel like I have to answer at least a few of them—but  as I’ve said before, just don’t do it!  It’s fine to try your hand at a soufflé or at brewing your own beer, but candy is hard—really hard.  I know this from bitter experience:  as a teenager, I tried to make divinity with my brother.  In the process we invented a new kind of plastic.  The cooking pot actually had to be thrown away.  My mom was livid.

Now, if you’re bound and determined to do this, you’re on the right track asking for a recipe.  No, I won’t provide one—I refuse to get involved in your doomed effort—but I will steer you toward a good source.  Go see if “Real Simple” online has a recipe, because I used to get that magazine and once found a recipe for ice cream sandwiches (look, here it is now!).  Just three ingredients (ice cream, cookies, and toppings), and one easy step.  That’s the kind of recipe you want.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the recipe for “Fudge Cockaigne” in The Joy of Cooking.  My teenage daughter made that—or, rather, a failed approximation of that—today.  (Did I help?  No—I refused, even when she was totally underwater and begging for assistance.)  Check out this instruction:  “When nearing 234 degrees, there is a fine overall bubbling with, simultaneously, a coarser pattern, as though the fine bubbled areas were being pulled down for quilting into the coarser ones.”  Are you kidding me?  What’s amazing is that my daughter read the recipe first, three times over, but instead of running screaming from the room, she shrugged and thought, “How hard could it be?”

The answer?  Very hard.  Look at the sludge she came up with, $12 in ingredients and two hours later:

Actually, you know what?  Go for it.  Make Fudge Cockaigne with your daughter.  Destroy a perfectly good cooking pot in the process.  Consider your kitchen a microcosm for the doomed, futile world we’re stuck in.  Teach your daughter to give up on her big ideas—might as well get that over with.  All is vanity.  The center cannot hold.

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

I’ve heard some great things about chocolate, such as its antioxidant qualities and the fact that it raises HDL.  Is this wishful thinking, or is there science behind it?

Tom G, Brooklyn, NY

Dear Timmy G,

If you look closely at any chocolate product, you’ll see this fine print:  “Purported benefits of chocolate have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.  This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”

Okay, you won’t see any such thing.  But while you’re looking at the fine print, check the ingredients to make sure you’re really eating chocolate, and nothing but chocolate.  You know what “natural flavors” means?  It basically means artificial flavors.  “Natural” means “not created in a test tube,” but it doesn’t mean your “chocolate” or “chocolate flavored” or “chocolaty” confection tastes like chocolate for the right reason (i.e., being actual chocolate).  If food scientists discover that giraffe semen imparts a chocolaty flavor, they can add it under the “natural flavor” label.  And as far as I know, giraffe semen isn’t an antioxidant.  So whatever the benefits of chocolate, don’t forget that it contains sugar and fat and often a whole lot of other crap that certainly isn’t good for your health.

(Okay, I don’t know that giraffe semen is actually used for flavoring.  But vanillan, often found in “chocolate” products, can be made from wood pulp, creosote, and even cow dung, which would qualify as a “natural” flavor.  Vanillan is also commonly biosynthesized.  Yum!)

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

I read an article about this stoner-type college dropout who, after an epiphany on a ski lift, decided to become a chocolatier (even though he had never liked chocolate), and with some cash from his mother and his uncle, he started a chocolate company called Dagoba that was eventually bought out by Hershey so now he’s rich.  So candy must be pretty easy to make!  Why wouldn’t I give it a try?

Mark R, Grand Junction, CO

Dear Mark,

Go for it.  Just don’t bring my name into it.  And you might take a lesson from the Dagoba guy, who made his first batch by “melt[ing] two batches of organic chocolate,infusing one with milk chai, the other with raspberries and rose hips.”  That is to say, one of the ingredients in his candy was:  candy.  See?  He was following the “Real Simple” model!  So as you go into business “making” candy, try to find the right balance between food science and marketing.

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

Why can’t we have more candy?  It’ll get us out of your hair and stop our petty sibling feuds, and as an added bonus, it will slowly poison us so that you eventually won’t have to deal with us anymore.  From a logical standpoint, the answer to your child-rearing problems seems obvious.  I trust you will take the reasonable course of action and we will be seeing some serious changes in your parenting style soon.

A.A., Albany, CA

Dear “A.A.”,

I told you not to bother me when I’m working!  And I’m not in a very charitable mood right now after your disastrous experiment with the Fudge Cockaigne.  I told you I wanted a forensic level of kitchen cleanup, and the floor in there still looks like a dog had diarrhea on it.  Now get back in there and finish cleaning!

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

What is the deal with white chocolate, anyway?

Martin S, Saratoga, CA

Dear Martin,

It’s a lot of B.S., if you ask me.  It’s not chocolate—not really.  It doesn’t have any actual cocoa, just “cocoa butter,” that fatty stuff they make lotion and ointment out of.  White chocolate is to actual chocolate what Red Vines are to real licorice.

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

Please help—my husband is driving me crazy!  He’s always buying this fancy-pants dark chocolate and with every new kind he finds, the percentage of cacao is higher and he’s that much more sanctimonious about it.  I don’t even enjoy eating it anymore—the bitter crap he’s bringing home is like what my mom used to bake with.  If an authority figure like you stuck up for traditional chocolate, that might finally sway him.

Linda S, Austin, TX

Dear Linda,

I won’t go on record supporting milk chocolate, which I don’t care for, but you’re exactly right—there’s a point of diminishing returns as chocolate goes too far upscale.  You start seeing added stuff like cayenne pepper or bacon bits or 18-karat gold thread or whatever and it becomes absurd.  Remind your husband that chocolate is a candy, not a pissing contest.  And then buy your own chocolate because he’s not going to listen to you.

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

I’m halfway into making vanilla taffy for the first time, and this recipe is telling me to pour the molten candy mixture onto a marble slab.  I don’t have a marble slab!  What can I use in a pinch?  Please reply soon!

Leyla A, Seattle, WA

Dear Leyla,

I guess you’re new to my column!  Who told you making taffy was a good idea?  My advice is to pour that onto something smooth and slick but also expendable, like the glossy cover of an old copy of “Real Simple.”  And then throw it away.

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

There’s this one episode of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” where Mr. Rogers has this cotton candy machine, and this chef stops by to make some cotton candy.  There’s some really intense Alpha Dog stuff going on there, a simmering duel of one-upmanship lurking just beneath the politeness.  Definitely worth watching.  Check it out in the archives!

Sean L, Arlington, VA

Dear Sean,

Noted.

Dear Dr. Chocolate,

Screw it, I’m going to See’s.  I know that’s not a question.  I just thought you might want to know.

A.A., Albany, CA

Dear A.A.,

Be sure to bring your house key.  And pick me up a couple of Toffee-Ettes.

Dr. Chocolate is a syndicated columnist whose advice column, “Ask Dr. Chocolate,” appears in over 400 blogs worldwide.

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Self-Help & the 8th Habit

Introduction

Don’t you hate it when this happens?

It’s always so tempting to mock the word “paradigm,” and other concepts from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  (I mentioned this book to my brother and he said, “Let me guess … these habits include yachting, fine dining, and fox hunting.”)  And if more people knew the subtitle of the 7 Habits book, Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, they’d probably make fun of that, too.  In general, the entire self-help industry has been a giant target for all kinds of sarcastic vitriol.

For example, George Carlin is very funny on this topic.  He asks, “Why do so many people need help?  Life is not that complicated….  I really don’t understand:  if you’re lookin’ for self-help, why would you read a book written by somebody else?  That’s not self-help … that’s help!  There’s no such thing as self-help!  You did it yourself … you didn’t need help!”

As much as I enjoyed that riff, I can’t embrace his distaste for self-help.  I myself have no use for glib aphorisms, much traditional advice (like the importance of goals), and frankly most of the books in the self-help section.  However, I’m a big believer in self-help as an endeavor, and actually respect The 7 Habits.  In fact, in this post I’m going to give you an 8th habit—an all-important one that I think Stephen R. Covey missed.

The self-help paradox

Some of the abuse that The 7 Habits gets is based on clichés like “paradigm” and “win-win.”  The comic strip “Dilbert” has been mining that stuff for so long, “Dilbert” itself can get repetitive.  (In Covey’s defense, “paradigm” and “win-win” weren’t hackneyed when he first trotted them out, and it’s only due to the massive success of his book that they’ve been overused ad nauseam.)  But I think there’s something else people are bothered by; after all, many other self-help books, such as Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, avoid the problem of trite language.  I think a lot of people instinctively recoil from the very idea of self-help.  (I know I did, when I was younger and cockier.)

Why should this be?  Well, many forms of self-help are aimed at people with drug, alcohol, or other addictions … not exactly the kind of person we hold up as a role model.  Beyond that, I think there’s a tendency to equate self-help with weakness, and whiny-ness, and perhaps with excessive humility.  Maybe showcasing the awareness of your own frailty can come across as emo.  If you meet a stranger at a cocktail party who within 30 seconds is mentioning his or her therapist, you might start looking for an excuse to disengage.

But if you look at self-help as commitment to improving yourself (and one that can be as private as you wish), and if you acknowledge that there’s a distinction to be made between good, sound advice in book form and all the chaff that any industry will naturally accumulate, I don’t think there’s any reason to automatically eschew the entire notion of trying to be a better person.  The alternative, when you think about it, is to think of yourself, “I’m just fine the way I am.” 

To me, that’s a pathetic way to be, and actually strikes me as more conducive to being emo.  When I witness emo behavior, I see it as an overblown, melodramatic indulgence and I want to shout, “Aw, just shut up!  I know you’re feeling all sad and vulnerable, but don’t wallow in it—work on it!  You could start by growing a pair!”  (Am I sexist?  Perhaps not—after all, I didn’t say “when I witness emo behavior in a male.”  I think “grow a pair” has, like “guy,” become almost a gender-neutral term.)

Frankly, I think the biggest problem with The 7 Habits is simply that not enough people actually read the book.  More broadly speaking, I think too many people—for reasons of pride, or insecurity, or laziness, or some combination of these—are unwilling to challenge their personal status quo.

So here’s my 8th habit:  get help.  Or to be more specific, don’t get too comfortable.  Concede that you’re not perfect, and work on yourself—and don’t pretend that your natural instincts about this process are any match for the careful, thorough thinking that very good minds have already done.  After all, if you knew how to be the perfect you, you’d be perfect.  And you’re not.  (Nobody is, except perhaps Atul Gawande.)

An example

I’m a cheap bastard.  When my daughter’s Stumpjumper (a great bike, but ~15 years old) wasn’t shifting right, I was determined to fix the shifter instead of replacing it.

I tried the easy route recommended by my mechanic pals (hosing the shifter’s innards down with WD-40), but that didn’t work.  This thing was completely gummed up.  So I took it apart.  Damn, that thing’s complicated.  There are all these washers and bushings and pawls, and it’s got 3 springs, one of which you have to wind up and hold tension on while you bolt the shifter back together.  I took photos as I went, but I wasn’t methodical enough, and missed important information, and wasted vast amounts of time in vain.  Throughout the ordeal there was this voice in my head:  “You’re an idiot!” and “Your brothers are right, you’re not mechanically minded!” and “You suck!” and “You call yourself a bike mechanic?” and “Like an idiot, you bought your kid an ancient bike you can’t get parts for and now you’re screwed!” and so forth.

I took a break from the shifter repair to closely examine these strong feelings I was having, and question whether there’s something wrong with me that I can’t take little failures like this in stride.  In the big scheme of things, a new shifter wouldn’t actually be that expensive.  Any third party would probably having trouble understanding why this meant so much to me—and maybe for good reason!  What if I’m being totally unreasonable, I wondered, and some deep fracture in my ego is starting to show itself?  These are all worthy ideas to investigate, and it’s a worthy thing to have the bravery to confront yourself and entertain such doubts.

So did I look online for a good therapist who could sort out my feelings of self-loathing?  No, in the final analysis I determined that that wasn’t the kind of self-help I needed.  I just needed a good website with some better photos of the shifter.  And man, I found an awesome site!  Click here:  this guy not only posted 17 great photos of the left shifter alone, he annotated them and provided complete instructions!

Frankly, I was plenty daunted by the website, because it gave me even less excuse to chuck the shifter and buy a replacement.  But more than that, this guy’s success, and his generosity in putting up the instructions and photos, inspired me.  He obviously has great patience, and a more methodological approach, and I thought, “Why can’t I be more like him?”  So I gave it another crack, and it really did end up being a self-help project (i.e., requiring my own effort and insight) because I couldn’t just follow the guy’s directions … I needed to conceptualize the pieces in 3-D, and try out various ways of putting them together (since I’d buggered the thing up to the point that some were installed wrong).  In case you’re interested, here’s my own set of photos:

(That last photo is a still from a movie I made, which was instrumental because even when I had the shifter assembled correctly, I still had to reach through a gap in the housing with a screwdriver and click the internal pieces back and forth, to work in the oil, before the lever finally started working—which it totally does now, like a champ!).

My point is this:  at the core of self-help is a refusal to let yourself off the hook too easily.  Sure, there is good advice out there about being compassionate with yourself, and the self-loathing voices that countless people have in their heads are not often very constructive.  But for every person who pushes himself too hard and needs to lighten up, I’d say there are 10 who are just too complacent to push their comfort zone, or too reluctant to get help on something they can’t handle on their own.

Giving up too easily can lead to serious consequences; standing down and accepting defeat is no good for the soul.  When I got that shifter working again, I just sat there for a spell, clicking away, putting it through its paces, as delighted as Eeyore savoring his birthday presents:  putting his (popped) balloon from Piglet into the (empty) honey pot Pooh gave him and taking it back out again.

Without getting help (and inspiration) from this complete stranger on the Internet, I’d have failed to fix the shifter, and that self-annihilating voice might well have taken to reasserting itself every time I looked at the mismatched replacement shifter on my kid’s bike.  Instead, the repaired shifter is now an emblem of my perseverance.  (Is it okay that I berated myself so much during the process?  Yeah, probably.  I’m a loud person from a loud family  so my internal voice is bound to be loud as well.  I think my self-esteem is fine.  Sometimes my stubbornness plays a little rough, that’s all.)

One more point to be made here is that not all self-help resources are touchy-feely.  A how-to guide, or the shifter repair instructions on a website, are still self-help.  Why are so many people perfectly casual about instruction manuals and how-to guides but suddenly get nervous when the book is about fixing yourself instead of some object?  A self-help book is either good or it isn’t … there’s no shame in giving it a go, even if (or perhaps especially if) the process might subject you to uncomfortable self-examination.

The cynical justification for the 8th habit

Okay, maybe you’ve been gagging on my whole essay here because you’re just too cynical to go in for this idealistic self-help business and my saccharine success story.  That’s fine—but you should still embrace my 8th habit—get help—for one purely pragmatic reason:  chances are very good your boss will appreciate it.

Who is it, after all, in the “Dilbert” strip who’s always spouting stuff about “win-win” and “paradigms”?  It’s the bosses!  Who are the people, in the real world, who have used these terms so much, and for so long, that they’ve become clichés?  The executives! 

Now, there are various ways to account for this.  One way is to say that executives just have a weakness for this stuff and those who spout banal platitudes and ideological sound-bites are bound to flock together.  But another possible explanation is that a willingness to embrace the self-help ethos is what actually helped propel these people to power.  I don’t think it matters which of these you believe, because the bottom line is, management does respect the self-help impulse.  (Over a dozen C-level executives are quoted in the “Praise for…” section of The 7 Habits.)

When you think about this, it makes perfect sense.  Any healthy corporation needs to foster a culture of earnestness, while rooting out cynicism (which can hugely erode employee morale).  I don’t think you can ever go wrong, career-wise, by erring on the side of humility.

So am I saying you should leave The 7 Habits on your desk for your boss to see, and/or gush to him or her about this or that self-help book?  Not at all.  This essay being the exception, I’m generally pretty quiet about my own self-improvement projects.  Moreover, there’s no telling what your particular boss might think of this or that self-help resource.  But if you suppress your cynicism, and acknowledge the reality that earnestness isn’t the 8th deadly sin, and at the very minimum resist the temptation to pooh-pooh the various professional development programs and rah-rah sales kickoff meetings or whatever, your attitude is bound to evolve, and this will be noticed.  Humility is a habit that very few people, I think, would hold against you.

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Dishwasher Man

oooo
Introduction

For complicated reasons, my kitchen will only accommodate a dishwasher that’s less than 18 inches wide. The first one I bought, an unknown brand nobody will service, broke down after just a year or two. I orderded a new one online, and when it arrived I faced the classic homeowner’s dilemma: do I try to install it myself, or hire somebody who knows what he’s doing? Not a simple question, especially when my masculine dignity hangs in the balance. (“Masculine dignity” is a phrase I’ve borrowed from a pamphlet I got years ago from a couple of door-to-door Jehovah’s Witness types. It has become a handy buzz-phrase around our place.)

Here is the tale of my dishwasher struggle.

Why I should install it myself

Most of our house projects have been done by others: that is, by other men. This has been both a relief and an affront: relief that I didn’t have to exert myself and/or screw anything up, and an affront to my can-do male sensibility. Time and time again, as able-bodied men have carried out our home repairs, I would cross paths with them, invariably while I was carrying a load of laundry or the cat box and a little feces spatula. Or, I'd be doing a load of dishes, watching out the window as the men did some brutal landscaping job like digging a four-foot-deep trench through my backyard for a new drainage system. For socioeconomic reasons, these workers are usually Chicano, and if there’s any truth to the notion that they’re a macho bunch, they must think I’m a real sissy. They’ve all been far too professional to say anything, but I’ve self-applied the sting. I might as well be wearing an apron as they man the rotary saw, cutting the wood for my fence without need of a tape measure, a level, blueprints, or a liberal arts degree.

I doubt these workers admire my ability to bankroll the operation; that’s just as symptom of an unjust world where the bigger earners pilot a desk forty hours a week. In some cases, I wonder if the workmen actually have contempt for me. For example, when had our first dishwasher installed, the guy we hired pulled a fast one on us. There’s this anti-siphon device (the little plug that sticks out of the top of the sink and occasionally spews water), and though he put it in place atop the sink, he didn’t connect it to anything. I guess he figured we’d hassle him if he didn’t install all the accessories that came with the dishwasher, but that I’d never peek under there and notice the ruse. Either that or he just plain forgot to hook it up, which challenges the idea that it’s worth paying an “expert” to do the job.

Besides, how hard could it be to swap out one dishwasher for another very similar one? Why should I wait around while we find somebody to do it, schedule a time, go without a dishwasher until he can come do it, and pay a bunch of money on top of it? Looming over all these considerations is my male pride: I ought to be able to do this kind of thing myself.

Why I should hire an expert

I hate working on house stuff. I’m no slouch with tools, having worked for many years as a bike mechanic, but oddly enough, my experience with bikes makes home repairs particularly unpleasant for me. Bikes are predictable, well-designed, well-machined, and solid. There is generally one right way to install or repair a component, and it’s not hard to figure out what that is. When you screw in a bolt, it goes in smoothly and stops dead when it’s tight. Surfaces of things match, and when you’re done they’re flush. Everything is beautifully made; bearings are silky smooth. Bikes are a true pleasure to work on, especially the high-end racing bikes I deal with.

Homes, meanwhile, are a crazy mishmash of materials, techniques, and eras. They’re built on lumpy and/or hilly terrain that is only more or less solid. At least in my neighborhood, almost no two houses are alike. They’re worked on, over the decades, by a variety of crews with highly variable abilities and ethics. My house particularly is a kludge; built in 1929, it’s been the recipient of an unholy combination of neglect and really shoddy so-called upgrades. When I try to do the simplest thing to it, I frequently run into annoying problems. Like, I try to put a nail into the wall to hang a picture, and a crack runs across the painted plaster wall. Or I’ve missed the stud and the nail just makes a useless hole in the plaster. Or the nail goes in a quarter inch and hits some incredibly hard thing and will go no farther. And hanging a picture is probably the simplest home improvement task there is!

I also have great respect for professionals, and pity for the hapless amateur who boogers things up completely. So many times as a bike mechanic I’d inherit what could have been a simple repair had the bike’s owner not tried to do it himself. You get a partially disassembled bike and a big bag of parts, not all of which have any place on the bike to even go. (One time there was a spark plug among the detritus, as though the guy had just scooped up everything from the garage floor.) It’s bad enough to screw up a bike, but what if I made a plumbing or electrical error? I could burn my house down, or cause a massive unseen water leak that could dissolve a wall or, unbeknownst to me, soak my mudsill and attract termites.

What men do for inspiration

When I’m on the fence about whether or not to take something on, I get some advice—not from an expert, who would of course tell me to hire an expert, such as himself—but from any friend or family member who surpasses me in do-it-yourself capability. There’s a small chance this person will tell me, “Dude, you really don’t want to try that yourself,” but more likely he’ll give me encouragement and pointers. Make no mistake about it, though: you don’t ask for help unless you’re pretty sure you’ll take on the challenge. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up to lose face in front of another male. Not a pretty sight.

I started with my brother Bryan. Fortunately for posterity, I hit him up on instant messaging, so the transcript is available for your delectation. (I’ve edited it here to weed out the side diversions that, while amusing to me, are beside the point. Also, instant messages have a way of getting out of phase, like ships crossing in the night, so I’ve rearranged things a bit.)

DA: Have you ever installed a dishwasher?
BA: No, I have not. I have worked one over pretty good, though. I reckon it’s not that hard, especially if you've already got one installed. It’s like heart surgery, only easier. Plug-n-play, baby.
DA: What if the hoses aren’t the same diameter or something?
BA: [It’s] just tubing, you know. You hook one end from the dishwasher to the thingy, and the other end of the thingy to the drain hose. You might need couplings and things, too. You can get all that junk at McGuckins the next time you're in Boulder. Maybe it even comes with your new machine.
DA: I figure if it’s an hour project with no trips to the hardware store, I'm as sound as a pound. But other than that, I'm feeling like a wuss.
BA: Like a wuss—because you're sick, or scared, or what?

This is where the conversation gets interesting. Male support is, I think, a lot different from female support. Women listen, uphold, and empathize. Men apply subtle, but powerful, pressure. By questioning your manhood, they bring out your stronger self, just like the Army. Witness:

DA: I’m scared.
BA: Just think of how impressed Erin will be with your manhood should you succeed.
DA: Right, but think of how much face I could lose if I fail!
BA: True story, I'm scared, too. Sometimes I'm scared to go home, for fear of what damage awaits me.
DA: [provides web link to 28-page installation instructions for the dishwasher in question]
BA: Man, with instructions like those, you can't go wrong! Just don't let the wife see them, or she’ll figure she can do it!
DA: Funny you should say that. I was just showing her the instructions as Exhibit A in my defense should I elect not to try this at home. “Cripes, woman, it’s 28 pages and you need a 90-degree elbow with 3/8” N.P.T. external threads, and copper tubing, and it has stuff like toekick and leveling legs!”
BA: Are you kidding? If you give up now, she'll know you're a wuss! Just hand those instructions to Alexa [my eight-year-old daughter] and she could do it!
DA: You're not making it any easier for me to wuss out, you know. “Do not solder within 6 inches (15.2 cm) from water inlet valve.” Like I know how to solder! Like I have a soldering iron!
BA: You don't have to solder! You’d use a torch, anyway. Now there’s a man’s tool. (I haven’t actually done it, but Dad has.)

With that last bit you can really appreciate Bryan’s masterful skill in applying pressure. His phrase “a man’s tool,” drawing an implicit contrast between me and a man (subtext: I am not a man!) flows perfectly into his invocation of our dad. Dad … now there’s a guy who would never, never shy away from a project like this. Check it out: even as a teenager he would boldly tear apart the engine of his VW beetle.


My dad is capable of fixing any household appliance in existence (whether or not he gets around to it promptly). One time he suspected that a hot water heater was on its last legs, and engineered a solution whereby a puddle on the floor would be detected and would trigger a solenoid that would drop some weight attached to a cord or cable that would crank closed the water supply, preventing the house from flooding. I’m not sure I’m describing this correctly, or that I have ever even understood the thing correctly, but you get the idea. My dad is a man’s man, who has tools and knows how to use them. Bryan’s simple words here meet the legal definition of entrapment, I think.

BA: But you've already got the water supply and the drain hose, so you're golden.
DA: IF they're compatible. WHICH I doubt. Our old one was a complete and total pile. A steaming load.
BA: Dude, I'm confident that you can do it. [Subtext: don’t let me down!] It’s just a couple of pipes.
DA: Come on! It's got a Waste Tee and these curvy drain traps....
BA: All that stuff's already there! Alls you have to do is unhook the old drain hose and hook the new one in its place. (Of course, you should be a man about it and hook up the air gap while you’re in there.) Just don’t electrocute yourself. I always give the kids a refresher course on what to do if you see someone being electrocuted before I do a project. More for shock value, and so that they’re duly impressed with my manhood, than anything else.

At this point, the phone rang. It was a colleague, with whom I’d separately been having a brief chat on the same topic. Guys are great. If you ask them about their health or their families you may get a few words, a cursory response. But throw out any sentence beginning with “Ever installed a…” and you’re almost guaranteed a passionate and detailed discussion. Throw in actual hardware, especially a car, and you enjoy practically unlimited use of their time and energy.

My colleague asked a number of questions about the plumbing, the old dishwasher, the new one, and so forth. We talked for about fifteen minutes, and eventually he concluded that I could probably do the job myself, though he advised me to have at least three inches of butt crack showing above my jeans.

At this point, two men—both more capable than I—had expressed confidence in me, and had thus applied the proper motivation. I was now determined to take on the project. I returned to my chat with Bryan, to give him the news.

DA: I’m goin’ in!
BA: Dude, good luck! We’re all counting on you! [An allusion to the disaster movie “Airplane,” of course.]
DA: What about “You fool! You’ll be killed!” [Bryan has missed an opportunity to play out a standard Albert set piece.]
BA: D’oh.
BA: Don’t do it, you fool!
DA: I must do this … alone!
BA: (What was I thinking?)
DA: (Yeah, no kidding.)
BA: You might want to put on some baggy jeans for full effect. (So they’re... shoot, what do the kids call it? Ah, “sagging.”) You'll be The Man if you pull this one off. [This comment, of course, shows the disingenuous nature of Bryan’s earlier assertions that this job would be really easy.]
BA: Let me know how that turns out!
DA: We shall see!
BA: Go get ‘em, tiger! Woot woot! OH, and don't forget to disconnect the power first! Worse case it doesn't have a plug, just wires, but you can just skin them and shove them in the holes. Huh huh, no. You'd have to buy a plug.
DA: Surely they would provide a plug…
BA: Man, if that’s your nightmare, you're doing okay.

How women inspire their men

Erin was astounded that I’d decided to install the dishwasher myself. Earlier she’d made a pretty airtight case for outsourcing: “Look, you don’t have all the parts on that list, and you don’t have all the tools, and you’ve never dealt with plumbing. We could call Galvin Appliance—they’ve got a guy we could hire to do it, even though we didn’t buy it there. In this economy he’d probably really appreciate the work.” This argument was convincing, even glib—an underhanded attack, perhaps, on my masculine dignity? And now, her disbelief that I was up to the challenge—bordering on prohibiting me outright from taking it on—further steeled my resolve. She had upped the ante. Failing in the task and then having to admit I was wrong … that would just be adding insult to injury. Besides, her lack of faith had slightly wounded my male ego. I had to turn that around.

How children inspire their dads

My kids had by this point spotted the huge box the dishwasher came in, and I think Erin had told them they’d have to wait before playing with it. But once they caught wind that I was installing the dishwasher right now, they cheered and danced around. They shadowed Erin and me closely as, almost tripping over them, we dragged the dishwasher into the kitchen. Alexa even said, “I’m so excited you’re going to do it, so we can watch!” If I turned back now, I’d have two very disappointed daughters. Fortunately, the box was more interesting than my struggles, so they weren’t in my way as I tackled the task.

The job itself

Before I began work, Erin urged me to print out the directions I’d found on the web. I refused. After all, many of the pages were describing how to prep the area under the counter; how to make sure the dishwasher would fit; how to move it without throwing out my back (fortunately, my back was already out, so I didn’t have to worry about that); how to splice wires together (I was sure this was for some nonstandard implementation, like if your house didn’t have a nearby electrical outlet), etc. There really were soldering guidelines, which I was certain wouldn’t apply. It just seemed like a waste of paper and ink to print that whole thing out; I would have it on the PC for reference. (At the end of the job I realized that—duh!—a paper copy of the instructions was provided with the dishwasher. In the event, I never did look at them, being, after all, a guy.)

I set about methodically photographing the existing setup before dismantling it. That part was pretty easy. I even thought to put a tub down to catch the spills.

From there it seemed a simple matter of finding the corresponding hoses and parts supplied with the new dishwasher. But wherever I looked, I found nothing. No supply line. No obvious place to hook up a supply line. No cord. It was crazy. Finally I unscrewed and removed the toekick plate, to see if the missing components were hiding underneath, like the bag of small organs the butcher puts inside a chicken or turkey. Still nothing … except a little stub were you would attach, say, a 90-degree elbow with 3/8” N.P.T. external threads. If you had one.

I looked into the old dishwasher to see what I could scavenge. I found a corresponding stub, connected via (eureka!) a 90-degree elbow to the supply line. So far, so good in avoiding a trip to the hardware store.

Next to this elbow on the old dishwasher was a little metal box that looked like it might have something to do with power. I removed a screw or two and took off the box, and found three wires coming out. Bryan hadn’t just been trying to scare me: these damn dishwashers don’t come with a cord!

How much money do you suppose the manufacturers save by not bothering to provide a cord? That is, how much would the Chinese kid or the robot get for doing a little assembly-line wiring? I couldn’t imagine, at first, why they’d skimp on this, and then it dawned on me: they can save fifty cents here and their customers will never know or care, because the cost of overcoming this hurdle will be buried in the price charged by whoever installs the dishwasher. Even if the consumer chafes at the expense of this labor, the manufacturer has already gotten their money and couldn’t care less. In a way, though, I felt reassured by this: for the company to nickel-and-dime me like this, their margins must be pretty slim; in other words, I probably got a pretty good deal.

I wasn’t happy about the idea of doing any wiring myself. After all, these wires would be near water, so there’s an electrocution risk, and any time you have live wires there’s a fire risk, and then there’s the less glamorous but equally dreadful prospect that no power would go to the thing at all, after all my work. But I was encouraged by an e-mail I’d gotten from a friend in response to my 2009 Holiday Newsletter, about my retail experience in London. She commiserated, citing a trip to London she took in 1980. She hadn’t realized her hair dryer wouldn’t work over there, and had to go out and buy a UK-compatible one. She got it home only to find it had no plug. Her British husband sheepishly told her that you had to buy that separately, at a hardware store, and wire it yourself. Now, if an entire nation had managed to put up with such nonsense, I thought, surely I can adopt the same chin-up attitude and push on with my task. Keep calm and carry on.

I phoned Bryan and consulted with him. “There’s a green wire,” I said, “which I guess is the ground, and a black, and a white. The cord from the old dishwasher has a green wire and two white. I guess the two white are interchangeable, right?”

“Oh, no!” Bryan replied. “Only one of those is live. You need to figure out which one it is.” I looked more closely. One of the cord wires had a ribbed plastic casing; the other was smoother. I looked at the photo I’d taken of the old wiring; ribbed plastic was evidently the equivalent of black. Glad I asked! Here is my handiwork:

Other than that, it really wasn’t that hard a job. Messing with the wires, and moving the elbow joint and supply line from the old dishwasher to the new one, were hassles because they’re all just inches from the floor, so I was sprawled out there a good while, my face occasionally bumping into a screwdriver. It also wasn’t pleasant having the old dishwasher drool on me periodically, or rolling over on a puddle or wet towel. I had to cut off part of the drain hose, which had a triple-diameter aperture to fit different junctions. (I confess, I’m trying to make this sound as complicated as possible.)

Getting the dishwasher to fit in the cavern below the counter was straightforward but really tedious. Lest I fall prey to what we English majors call the imitative fallacy, I’ll spare you the details. When I was done I was delighted to find wood beneath the counter to screw the dishwasher’s frame into. And then I was pretty much done!

At least, it appeared I was done. I was really wondering whether the thing would actually work. Would it get any juice from my home-wired cord? Would a hose burst and flood my kitchen? Would the dishwasher prove defective, now that my kids had dismantled the box and all the packing materials? Would some dire plumbing mistake cause raw sewage to spew up from the sink? Would some combination of problems cause the floor of my home to become electrified and kill us all?

Before I could test the new dishwasher, of course, I had to load it, and that meant generating dishes. Here’s where my family could help: we’re all great at this. In fact, my must-act-now project had delayed dinner significantly, and I was more than ready to chow down on some good blue-collar food:

Then I loaded up the new dishwasher and ran it. It seemed to take forever, only (I’m sure) because I was on pins and needles. It made the normal mild groaning and moaning noises that dishwashers make, accompanied by light swishing sounds and occasionally punctuated by a slurping gurgle in the sink. It was still toiling away when, exhausted, I went to bed. The next morning, I was greeted by a full load of sparkly clean dishes. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! I chortled in my joy.