With her family’s flight departing in exactly four hours, a local woman has reportedly refused to acknowledge the existence of their trip until the atmospheric concentration of Clorox in the hallway causes mild ocular burning.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Despite four fully packed suitcases sitting by the front door and a prepaid rental car waiting at the airport, 46-year-old Linda Berkowitz has reportedly blocked all conscious thought of her family's upcoming trip to Florida, insisting that "vacation" remains a purely theoretical construct until the downstairs bathroom smells indistinguishable from a municipal pool pump room.
According to family members, Berkowitz entered a fugue state of high-velocity sanitization at approximately 5:00 a.m. Thursday. Attempts to discuss the flight schedule, boarding passes, or the weather in Orlando have been met with blank stares and immediate commands to retrieve a fresh sponge, as Berkowitz systematically eradicates all evidence that human beings have ever inhabited the premises.
She looked right at my Hawaiian shirt this morning, sighed, and handed me a toothbrush to use on the kitchen baseboards.
The domestic sterilization protocol is reportedly driven by Berkowitz’s deeply held conviction that returning from a relaxing week at the beach to a house containing a single unwashed water glass is a psychological trauma from which the family could never recover. Furthermore, Berkowitz has repeatedly reminded her teenage children that any hypothetical burglars who might break in over the weekend "will not be judging us for our electronics, they will be judging us for the state of the crisper drawer."
At press time, Berkowitz had finally achieved a satisfactory level of respiratory irritation in the living room, allowing her to briefly smile, acknowledge the phrase "Disney World," and lock the front door. Sources indicate, however, that the departure may be delayed another thirty minutes as she has just noticed a microscopic smudge on the porch window.