Maybe, just as there are people who are physically incapable of seeing the difference between red and green or between blue and yellow, there are people who are incapable of distinguishing between "dusty" and "clean."
I suspect I may be married to such a person. I've long been frustrated by being the only one in my home who seems to notice the presence of dust on surfaces, or dust bunnies along the floor molding or behind doors, or dirt accumulation in the corners of the stairs. But last week I learned that I may also be the only one in the house who notices when a surface is already clean.
We've been having trouble with our new television and broadband service (from a company that the federal government broke up in the 1980's). The technician was scheduled to come out late Thursday afternoon to have a look at it. I had commented on an earlier evening how dusty the house - and particularly the entertainment center - was looking. When I was home for lunch, I got out the duster and cleaned up the area, as well as some other spots that I noticed needed the attention. I also swept the stairs, which had been getting increasingly grungy. These things needed to be taken care of anyway, even if we didn't have company coming over on Saturday evening.
Later in the evening I asked my wife if she'd noticed that the technician hadn't had to contend with a layer of dust. With dawning comprehension, she replied, "Oh, you dusted at lunch time? No wonder it didn't look that bad when I did it!"
Of course, I suppose this could just mean that I did a terrible job, but I don't think so.
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