Life's Little Annoyances

There are a lot of things in this world that I could do without. Take a look, for instance, at those annoying dryer sheets. Now I’m not a man prone to violence, but whoever is responsible for their creation should be forced to wear them under their armpits as deodorant shields—that’s where many of them have turned up in my laundry.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it must have been some inexperienced man who invented the dryer sheet; no realistic home-maker would have made such a nuisance. Or maybe the development of dryer sheets started out as a bad joke that got out of hand. All I know is, when I put one of them in the dryer, with a load of clothes, it disappears—only to turn up in the strangest places.

Let me tell you something. It’s not all that fun to be undressing in the school locker room for gym and have the whole class bent over in laughter at the dryer sheet stuck to the left cheek of your derriere.

On the flip side, I have to admit I have found some good uses for those sheets. For one thing, by dropping them behind me, they serve as trail markers for finding the path back to my laundry room. Who knows? I might hit my head some day while doing the wash and suffer from a case of acute amnesia.

Dryer sheets can also be used as deodorizers. I once knew a woman who put used dryer sheets in her shoes. The manager at the local thrift store was always happy to receive her discarded shoes, and personnel never had to worry about scrubbing them to get out bad odors. In fact, her shoes were always the pair that sold the quickest.

Another useless invention is scented toilet paper. The way I figure it, if a guy is going around sniffing people’s rear ends he ought to be arrested. Of course that’s if he’s still alive after the person he’s smelling kicks the bejeebers out of him.

On the other hand, think of the money we could save on aftershave and perfume by stuffing scented toilet paper in our shirts and blouses. Shoot, if I owned a perfume company I’d be worried. Someone should scout the different scents available in the toilet tissue business. Personally, I’d enjoy snuggling up to a woman who smelled like a Carolina pine forest.

I know a guy who invented a toupee for bald eagles. When he made a sweater for a cold duck, his family became concerned. I try to visit him at the “home” no less than once a week.

For years now, I’ve been trying to figure out the reasoning behind the invention of leaf blowers. Were they designed as a tool for getting back at your neighbor for some atrocious offense? It seems to me that ridding your yard of fallen leaves by blowing them into your neighbor’s yard has been responsible for more feuds than moonshine, boundary disputes and shot gun weddings.

Thousands of years from now, archaeologists will be digging up our ruins and will come to the conclusion that the demise of our culture was caused because we were a warring people. They’ll declare that our main weapon of war was a gas-powered machine with a long tube-like trunk, our friend the dreaded leaf blower. They may not determine exactly how this machine was used, but evidence will show that it seemed to be the root of many tribal conflicts—such an ugly scene.

Throughout history there has always been those “flash in the pan inventions,” or as some call them, the “here today, gone tomorrow” contraptions.

The electric lawnmower was one of those. Now there was a winner. “Save on gas, buy a plug-in mower.” Just suppose you had an accessible electrical outlet near your yard. You'd have to have had a very small yard or a lot of extension cords and plenty of electricians tape for the thing to have been of any use.

Now, in every neighborhood there’s always at least one resident who has to be the first to buy the latest gadget on the market. He’s the one who doesn’t want to just keep up with Joneses; he wants to be the Joneses. This was the guy who after seeing an advertisement for the electric lawn mower ran right out and bought one. Six months, 15 extension cords, and miles of electricians tape later, he reverted back to the trusty ole gas mower, after providing the neighborhood with a half a year of good laughs.

They’re part of life; there’s no escaping them. Useless inventions will always be around as long as there’s people to dream them up and others to purchase them.

Maybe I’ll start working on an electric belly button lint picker. Who knows? It just might work—it just might.