HOLLY NADLER

508-274-2329

(hollynadler@gmail.com)

You know you’re a natural-born ditz when I Love Lucy reruns appear less like comedy and more like cinema verité.

An example: The other night I had my dishwasher fully loaded only to realize I was out of dishwasher detergent. I’ve always harbored a slightly paranoid conspiracy theory that all cleaners — shampoo, laundry detergent, bath gel, liquid hand-wash solution, et cetera — are composed of the same ingredients, with coloring, fragrance and emulsifiers thrown in to trick us into believing these are separate products.

So I thought I’d just use laundry detergent to clean the dishes. I filled the two small detergent reserve tanks, shut the dishwasher door, punched buttons, spun the dial and whomp! the appliance started up as if this night were no different from any other night.

Three minutes later, a deluge of suds started to spill from the bottom of the dishwasher. My fiancé (well, maybe I should say my futureex-fiancé now that he’s seen me in full Lucille Ball mode), Jack, and I grabbed all the towels from the linen closet and hurled them one by one at the soapy flood, but the tsunami of suds kept pouring forth, over, under and through the pile of towels. Thankfully there are two working mops in our cottage, so Jack and I got busy splashing the overlap over the floors of the living room, both bedrooms and the bathroom. The silver lining: man, was our little abode clean! And, I no longer believe that every cleaning product is a clone of the others.

Okay, so this past Monday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Jack and I were due at 4:30 p.m. for a “break fast” at our friend Cynthia Wolfson’s house off Barnes Road. Around 3 p.m. I borrowed Jack’s truck to go interview an Island writer in the old Thimble Farm region. As always happens when Vineyarders give you directions to their homes, you think you understand completely where you’re heading until you get within shouting distance of your destination and the lane you’re supposed to turn into looks too much like an ancient way to accommodate a vehicle, and the signposts are seemingly positioned the wrong way, and you’re befuddled just like Lucy and Ethel used to get lost in farm country.

So I turned into what I thought was the right house, and everything about it looked right except that the number on the door was 52 digits off from the address I was seeking. Okay, reverse the truck, squeeze out of the narrow driveway bounded by two sets of low rocks and, voila! my future ex-fiancé’s prized pickup truck is suddenly hung up on a newly created flatbed of rocks, one Stonehenge-shaped boulder sticking up into the axel or drive-shaft or whatchamacallit, and the rear left wheel suspended three feet above a gulley.

The two teen daughters and their dad who lived in the house, plus the dad’s visiting male friend, appeared and began digging, crow-barring, rope-tying, and crawling under the chassis of the truck to dislodge the rocks with their hands until, 40 minutes of grueling manual labor later, I was able to switch the vehicle into four-wheel drive (the guys had to talk me through it), and bump the truck forward.

I asked if I could bake them cookies or my own special carrot cake, but they declined all efforts to reciprocate, instead inviting me to “Pay it forward.” So if anyone is out there sick in bed and in need of babysitting, weed-pulling, letter-typing, you name it, call me to help me work out my debt with the universe and these two merciful men.

Meanwhile, we were an hour and two courses late to Cynthia’s Yom Kippur supper, but I avoided what could have been my biggest atonement effort of the Jewish New Year: repairing the underbelly of my future ex-beloved’s truck.

For adults interested in continuing education and getting out of the house, Adult and Community Education of Martha’s Vineyard is starting on Monday, Oct. 5. It’s not too late to register for any of the 50 courses. To find out more, e-mail makessensecommunication@gmail.com.