People close to me know that in addition to reading, hanging out with my husband and family (but especially my grandboys), and swimming, my favorite pastime is doing laundry. In addition to working at a bookstore or a library, Computilo the Elderly would be very happy running a laundromat as a potential retirement career. My brother, Bob, has often referred to me as “The Mad Laundress,” and my children have resorted to locking their suitcases when they come to visit just to prevent me from snatching their dirty clothes to wash. The only other person in my family and friends circle to possess the same compulsion is my son-in-law’s mother. Needless to say, the birth of any children is always a high spot, not only for the potential to see the new grandchild, but mostly, to add their laundry to our respective piles. When we are together in the same house, we have worked out a friendly arrangement as to who has the priority to do the laundry at specific times.
When we went to Ukraine to visit our son Joe, I was very heartened to find that a) Joe had a washing machine, and b) that our rental apartment had one! How delighted I was that since I couldn’t understand anything on Ukrainian television, I could spend any vegging time doing laundry!
Having worked in computer book publishing for nearly 25 years, describing complex activities in plain English has become second nature to me. What I soon discovered was that the washing machines in Ukraine include picture directions! With no explanation as to what the pictures referred to! For example, a picture of concentric circles with a line drawn through it meant something you didn’t want to do or didn’t want the machine to do. But what? I soon found out that the concentric circles meant “centrifuge” and that you didn’t want it to do something. That something was to use the “centrifuge” to spin out the water. I found this out after I began to drag heavy, water laden towels from the machine. Did I forget to mention that very few people in Ukraine have clothes dryers? Most everything is air dried. It took 2-3 days for our towels to dry, it should be noted. Other controls were equally enigmatic. What was the delicate cycle? Which control meant you could (or should) add bleach? Trial and error finally saved me from myself, but it’s clear that the Italian manufacturers (all washers seemed to have been manufactured in Italy) have a ways to go in their icon representations. Once again, the impatient, dull, Amerikanskis were foiled by the more advanced technology found in other countries.
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Computilo 