Why Don’t They Empty the Dishwasher?

And other questions about Teenagers

One of my pastimes is as an assistant coach on a girls’ basketball team, and a few weeks ago the head coach asked me a very good question, “Why aren’t they running the offense?“, which is a question we ask each other a great deal, but I had a momentary epiphany which I like a great deal (still).

“Why don’t they empty the dishwasher, even though we tell them to do it every day? Why when they finish emptying the dishwasher don’t they put dirty dishes into the dishwasher?”

It really does sum up the problems we have with the young ladies apparently not listening to us, they just don’t seem to remember things that we think are very important. My opinion is that they think these are “requests”,  they simply don’t listen or they don’t think the tasks are very important, but that is not really the point of this post.

We keep thinking the girls are making “mistakes”, but I don’t think that really is the case, it is just they simply don’t think of it at the time (i.e. a sin of omission not a sin of misinterpretation or mistaken action). We will keep working with the young ladies (although the season is coming to a close very soon), maybe they will have an epiphany of their own.

I have surmised this is what happens to a lot of folks when they start creating the Shite Vortex that is their financial situation, they are not trying to create it, but by forgetting the simple rules that Financial Bloggers spew (sorry a long weekend of dealing with bodily fluids) daily, they create the problem.

This doesn’t excuse either our players or the folks who create Financial Shite Vortexes, it just allows me to understand the thinking processes a bit more (I empathize, but I don’t sympathize). Understanding why mistakes are made, gives me hope that the “mistakes” can be averted the next time.

Why do you think folks do those weird things, that they know are wrong, but do them any how? Do you have a dishwasher that never gets emptied?