Every so often, I get the feeling that I’m living wrong or that everyone else knows something I don’t. Occasionally, I’ll get wind of the way other people are doing things, and it blows my mind. One of the first times that happened was when I was watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Too Many Showers

In the fourth episode of the third season Barney and Ted make a bet to see which one of them can fuck a chick they picked out at the bar. Barney tries to psych Ted out by telling him I’m that he fucked her a year earlier and asking him if 200 showers was enough to clean him off of her. I’m sorry, what? 200 showers? In a whole ass year? That’s only one shower every other day! I shower twice, every fucking day!

Now, I understand that showering twice a day is above average, but is only showering a few times a week, normal? God I hope not, but that would explain why everyone in line at the grocery store smells like a sweaty ballsack. Is that why everyone is wearing perfume?

Too Much Electricity

I get a recurring mindfuck about once a quarter when the electric company sends me a letter telling me what an electricity hog I am. It shows a graph of how much more energy I consume than my neighbors. It stumps me every time I see it because I know I can’t be in the upper percentiles of energy usage in my neighborhood.

Our neighbors across the street would run their air conditioner all summer long with their living room slider open. They would leave every light on in their house, even when they weren’t home – even when they were on vacation! I’ve heard my next-door neighbor’s air conditioner kick on when it was 61º outside. I even heard another neighbor’s A/C running when it was 57º outside. Open a fucking window!

There’s no way I’m using more electricity than these people because I don’t even have air conditioning, and I haven’t turned on the heater in 9 years because it’s broken. Most of the bulbs in my house are LED, we don’t have a pool, and the stove and water heater are both gas. So, how can I be using more energy than my neighbors who all keep their houses cold enough to store meat all summer long?

I know I’m not because I’ve talked to other people about their electricity bills, and I know what they’re paying. Some people are paying four figures to cool their houses in the summertime. I’ve never had a bill over $250 at any time during the year. When solar salesmen hear that they pretend like that’s outrageous and that I shouldn’t be paying more than $60 per month. Is it me or the propaganda?

Too Many Dishes

So, it’s bad enough to find out I’m wasting so much electricity, but then I come to find out that I’m also washing too many dishes. Our dishwasher broke after just 18 months, so we called a repair man out to take a look at it. He asked us how often we run it. We told him one to three times a day. We were flabbergasted when he told us that dishwashers weren’t meant to be used like that. “They are only meant to be run once every two or three days.”

The fuck you say?!

“Even run once every two or three days, they only last five years.”

“So, what you’re saying is that we got our five years out of this machine in just 18 months.”

“Basically.”

“🤦‍♂️”

I can’t believe that a normal family of 4 doesn’t run their dishwasher at least once a day. Are people really out there only washing dishes once or twice a week? Do they never cook? When either one of my kids cooks, they use every fucking dish in the house, and we have a lot of dishes. Is everyone just using paper plates and plastic forks? Do they eat every meal out? Is it me or the propaganda?

Too Many Loads

So, this afternoon, I ran out of laundry detergent and had to run to the store to buy more. Before I left, I studied the label of the old jug of detergent so I could be sure to get the same one. That’s when I noticed the propaganda on the label that claimed that this jug of detergent could last 5 months. Whether that’s true, I don’t know and I don’t care, it’s all relative. What caught my eye was that the 5 months were based on doing 10 loads of laundry per month. Who is only doing 10 loads per month?

I wash Bonnie’s and my clothes. I wash a minimum of five loads every single week. That’s our bedding, a load of whites, a load of blacks, a load of warm colors, and a load of cool colors. Bonnie always busts my balls about that, but it came about for a very pragmatic reason. We have too much laundry to do a load of lights and a load of darks. So, I had to separate them into four loads to not overload the machine. Separating the colors by cools and warms is just an aesthetic preference, and I find it very pleasing.

Anyway, that’s five loads every week, minimum. Sometimes, there’s more, and that doesn’t even include my kid’s laundry or Bonnie’s mom’s. I’m already up to 7 loads today, and I still have one more to go. We’re looking at between 30 and 40 loads every month. Do other people have more clothing than we do, and therefore can go longer between washes? I actually bought 30 T-shirts, so that I wouldn’t have to wash them so frequently, in the hope that they would last longer. I tried to wash them only once per month, but they stink up the room if they’re left that long.

Are these 10 loads per month people the same people who only shower a couple of times per week? Do they wash clothes on shower days? What is going on in this world, and how did I get so out of step with everyone else? Is it me or the propaganda?