Chatty appliances.

The other day my wife was downstairs and was sure she heard me grumbling in the next room, but I was not even in the house. I was outside with the dog. This was the complainer she heard:

It's funny in part because there would have been no question had this been our old dishwasher, the one that came with the house. That thing was so loud you had to raise your voice to be heard over it. The one we got later, the Bosch, is quiet, but you can just hear it from the next room. And what you hear, I guess, can sound like someone grumbling in the kitchen.

Certainly I can be heard grumbling, mumbling, bitching, and moaning at almost any hour of the day. It's what I do. I observe life, observe my condition, observe my own reactions to it, and utter low sentences for my own complaint or amusement or clarification. I'm the star of my own low-talking show. I'm often asked what I was saying, when what I was saying was not intended for anyone else's ears. 

Mumbling for comic effect probably only came to prominence after the invention of the microphone. Mumbling on stage would be difficult for an audience to follow. In older plays, a character might make asides to the audience to show what he or she is thinking, but those were usually comic or at least pithy observations, not the endless grumble of a muttering character. One of the first comedic mumblers I know of was a Peter Sellers Goon Show character, Willium "Mate" Cobblers, who could even be heard complaining in a low tone while other characters were supposed to be the ones speaking. 

Having determined that it was the dishwasher that was talking, I had to supply its dialogue. 

"Washin' the same damn bowl every day... You got just one cereal bowl, cheapskates?... Every day I gotta do the dog bowls and he never says nuthin'.... Thankless job.... Hate the way them forks poke me in the side when the water goes around.... Y'all usin' that cheap-ass basic Finish instead of the deluxe stuff.... I know what the mannufacterer said but he don' know nuthin'.... Take theses doggone plates and stuff 'em, that's what you can do...."

Of course, I hope the dishwasher is not that much of a malcontent. Goodness knows we rely on it heavily, and that only the air conditioner comes close to its place as a beloved fixture of the home. We lived without one for years, and we're not doing that again.