The Goldilocks Effect

I have an excellent cleaning lady.

She came from Mexico a number of years ago.

I don’t know the circumstances, and haven’t asked her.

I probably never will.

She’s a single mother; 3 children live with her.

Her English is fairly good.

But I don’t feel too sorry for her.

One of her sons drives a newer model of the same car I drive.

Occasionally she brings it to work.

Not always, but sometimes.

That reminds me of the time we had, for a brief time, a cleaning lady long ago who came to work at our house in a Jaguar.

I think my wife was driving a Ford station wagon at the time.

She cleans weekly for my daughter in another adjacent town, biweekly for me.

She does a good job and I am happy to pay her to do work I can do myself, but prefer not to.

One of the few observations I’ve made about her work is sometimes cleaning the top of a picture leaves it askew.

Like this:

Photo: author

I realize there is a slight parallax effect in the photo, but you get the picture.