A Draining Lesson  

ITbegins when I take my toaster oven out of the under-sink cabinet where it’s stored, and find that it’s wet. A closer inspection reveals the entire cabinet is soaked. My heart sinks. Something is leaking, and I have a feeling I know what it is.

I run my hand over the dishwasher’s drain pipe, which, like much of my kitchen plumbing, runs through that cabinet. Just as I suspect, the outside of the pipe is wet. I sigh. The dishwasher isn’t even a year old, and already it gives me trouble, just as I feared it would.

This appliance’s predecessor, a KitchenAid machine, also perished at a young age. It was barely two years old when things started going haywire. It stopped at random points in the cycle, refused to drain, and otherwise complicated my life. A repair guy diagnosed the problem — a faulty heater, which had been silently leaking for a while. By the time it was discovered, it had leaked onto the computer, the “brain” of the machine, resulting in the dishwasher’s equivalent of a nervous breakdown. The computer was beyond repair, and the repairman said he’d get in touch with the company to see what they could do.

Turns out, what the company could do was replace the heater, which was akin to replacing a faulty vehicle brake after an accident totaled a car.