Kids these days! Even kidults recently hired to work for a branch of the federal government. You'd think they'd know more about the workings of the world. It's not like we expect them to operate a wringer-washer, or crank up the Model T. Simply lacing up a new pair of shoes would be a good start. Or understanding the mechanics of opening the very product they work with on sometimes-11-hour days.
Perhaps I am being unkind (okay, we KNOW I am) to say that maybe this group should be called The Dimmest Generation. Maybe it's not their fault. Maybe it's ours, for coddling them and shoving the latest electronics under their noses, to carve out some me-time for ourselves.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO spend an inordinate amount of time shouting at kids to get off my lawn, shaking my cane at them, contemplating removing a tennis ball from the bottom of my walker to throw (like a ~wrinkly~ girl) at their head. The only thing stopping me is that my shawl might drift off my shoulders and get caught under my chair rockers.
Anyhoo... The Pony got a letter from the post office. Heh, heh. Of course that's usually where letters come from! I mean that the return address, the SENDER, of this letter was the USPS. It looked like something concerning his job. I told him it was on the kitchen counter, and he went to get it.
"The letter opener is right there by it."
"Oh. Okay."
Crickets. Figurative crickets, thank the Gummi Mary! I can't abide a literal cricket.
"Did you get it? Was it a check?"
"I don't have it open yet."
"Bring it here! And the letter opener!"
I made quick work of that envelope.
"Ohhh! So THAT'S how you use a letter opener!"
"What do you mean? How were YOU trying to use it."
"I thought you were supposed to pry open the flap with it."
"How can you think a letter opener is used to pry up the flap? What in the Not-Heaven? Wouldn't it be shaped more like a spatula for that? And not pointy-ended?"
Sheesh! The Pony is definitely not a mechanical engineer. But you'd think his raisin' as the son of a teacher-woman (of physics) would have stood him in better stead. Not-Heaven's bells! He must manufacture some natural repellent to osmosis...
Anyhoo... now I'm imagining a tiny spatula for opening letters. Like a tiny fork for olives, and a tiny spoon for tea sugar, and a tiny house for people with too much darn money to squander on fads when they could just buy a camper trailer already finished...
What about a shoe horn? Does he know how to use one of those? If not, how do you think he would position it?
ReplyDeleteI'm astonished! I really am. Did he NEVER see you opening any mail in all his growing up years? Did he never open any mail for you in his growing up years? I used to hand all the junk mail to my kids to open while I opened the more important stuff, like bills. Of course I never had anything so fancy as a letter opener, we just used a butter knife.
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteSurely you jest! I would not be surprised if The Pony thinks a SHOE HORN is a warning device to let other walkers know they're in the way. Like a bicycle horn, only mounted on a shoe tongue. IF he even knows what part of the shoe is called the tongue...
OOPS! I think you might have missed a delicious title the other day...
https://hillbillymansion.blogspot.com/2021/05/hes-caser-hes-macer-hes-no-good-lacer.html
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River,
He always had his nose in a GameBoy, and later in a laptop, writing fiction. He had to call and ask how to address an envelope to me when he went away to college.
Farmer H got me a fancy letter opener at Goodwill, but it was too heavy on the end. So then he found this very thin, plain-handled one that he got free at a tool show, I think, during his working days. Something about a metal cutter. I've been known to use a key in T-Hoe, for mail I wanted to see right away.