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Pot: You're filthy, you know.
Kettle: Shut up.
Pot: Hey. No need for hostility! I'm just stating the obvious.
K: Speaking of obvious, have you looked in a mirror lately?
P: I don't have access to a mirror. Why don't you be my mirror and reflect me to myself.
K: You'd trust me to do that? That surprises me.
P: I'm full of surprises. So go on. Reflect me.
K: Well, you're not a teapot (I guess you already know that); you are a cooking pot. And because of that you end up on the flame several times a day. And what happens . . . Well, I don't quite know how to break this to you.
P: Just do it.
K: Well, when a pot is put on a flame, over and over, the bottom and sides of the pot become tarnished. Ordinary kitchen grease gets on the pot and then when heat is applied, the grease gets cooked onto the pot. And, and . . .
P: Yes? Go on, go on.
K: And because of the baked-on grease, the pot turns . . . black. There's no other way to say it. You, my dear pot, are filthy.
P: Tell me you are joking! This couldn't be true! How could I not have known?
K: Not joking. It's quite true. I can't see myself either, not having access to a mirror, but I
think it's safe to say that you are as tarnished as I am.
P: So when I call you "filthy" I'm really just saying that we're similar?
K: Identical is more like it.
P: I'm all at sixes and sevens, trying to take this in. Is this a normal process? Are all pots and all kettles just like us? Is there no alternative?
K: There is a solution, but it doesn't depend on us. There's nothing WE can do about it, but something can be done. I just don't know how to go about it.
P: Tell me what you do know. Maybe we can figure it out.
K: well, after we've been used, we are washed, right?
P: Right.
K: But most pot- and kettle-washers concentrate on our insides, getting rid of all the leftover food and shining up the inside of us.
P: Right.
K: So what we need to do is get the person who washes us to clean our outsides as well. Not just with a lick and a promise, but a real scrubbing. With steel wool, for example.
P: That sounds painful.
K: Beauty always has a price. But it won't hurt a lot. It'll be kind of like a rough tickling, or the deep scratching of an itch. And the pay-off is that both of us will be shiny on the outside as well as the inside.
P: If we decide to risk it, how do we change the behaviour of our washer?
K: Do you know how to use a pen and paper?
P: No.
K: Can you talk human-talk out loud?
P: No.
K: Let's both just project as much blackness as we can so that the washer finally notices how tarnished we have become. After all, we both started off really shiny all over.
Time passes. The grime on the outside of the pot and the kettle increases, until finally one day the washer notices.
And within only a few months she decides to do something about it.
And shortly after that, both the pot and the kettle are as shiny as mirrors, and they reflect each other to each other and live happily ever after.
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