The tale of the dirty kastrull and the cleaning of the kitchen

None of these things were in the saucepan. And it was blue, not white. 

So, I've written before about the passive-agressiveness that accompanies the cleaning of public space. The conflicts, as previously mentioned, usually stay at the "passive" level - some occasional, inconspicuous hints about SOME people, annoyed sighs when emptying the dishwasher for what feels like the 54783974th time, and so on.

The only person that takes the passive out of aggressive is one of the french men. (Let's call him ponyboy for reasons I might explain at another time) I recently experienced this phenomenon, and I feel that I must record this injustice. First, let me clarify that when it was MY kitchen week, I cleaned the kitchen and the sink - including the things in it. In other words, there was a dirty sauce pan or two, and I cleaned them because it literally takes 20 seconds.

Ponyboy does not support this approach. Instead, he spent the first fifteen minutes of his cleaning day examining every dirty dish, and then proceeded to ask around until someone admitted to the crime of leaving it unattended in his presence. My claim to fame? A dirty saucepan. Actually, it was barely even dirty, it just had some rice stuck to the bottom. To deal with this issue, I had left it on the counter with some water in it to loosen up said rice, which I think is a perfectly acceptable way of postponing the washing up. This was not acceptable to Ponyboy. After some hectic arm movements and irritated mutterings from his part, I took the hint and cleaned said pan (albeit with a slightly bitter demeanor) and left it to dry.

But this was not the end of it. As I'm sitting there, watching TV in the living room (another public space), Ponyboy comes running up to me and shakes the sauce pan in my face. It was not clean enough. After hastily muttering sorry, I resumed my TV-watching, under the impression that me squeezing up next to him to use the sink at the same time that he was would be an awkward and uncomfortable experience.

Again, I was mistaken (everyone who thinks differently than Ponyboy is always mistaken). The whole ordeal culminated in him angrily slamming the pan down on the table nearest to me and rapid conversations in french with the other french dude in the corridor.

Obviously it all came to a definitive end once I resolutely got up off the couch and bashed his head in with the infamous sauce-pan - rice remains flying through the air and all. (Alternative ending: I remain in the couch for a few minutes, terrified of angry, long-haired french man and ashamed at my own cowardice, to then slowly proceed to the kitchen to clean the pan.)

Isabel