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Blogs by Robert A. Mills
THE BIRCH JOHN SOCIETY
8/10/2009 6:52:28 AM
Every time I fire up the old PC, turn on the radio in the shower, punch the remote to enable the TV, open a copy of the Sunday New York Times, or flip through a year old Reader’s Digest in some sawbone’s office, I am disappointed and feel cheated if I don’t learn something I didn’t know thirty seconds ago.
For example, the other day while brushing my teeth in the shower (yes, I save both water and time by scrubbing the ivories while standing off to the side waiting for the shower to heat up,) I heard an ad on the radio for a “soft toilet seat with pneumatic hinges that allow the seat and lid to resume the desired ‘female’ position automatically, without the loud, crashing noise of hard wood colliding with cold, harder enamel!”
Wow! Why didn’t I think of that?
The announcer enthusiastically went on: “Just imagine—those nocturnal trips to the bathroom with no fear of making one of the two worst mistakes known to mankind. . . . Either forgetting and leaving the seat up, or letting it slip out of your grasp and bound off the commode like a rifle shot—waking up the entire household and inspiring your nervous spouse to make that dreaded call to 911!”
The radio commercial explained that installation was as simple as loosening, then tightening, two bolts—even a “single distaff member with a pair of pliers can do it!” And the hinges were “guaranteed for life when the seat is used normally”—they work on the principle of “space-age hydraulics,” whatever that meant, “developed by NASA for the International Space Station!” (Didn’t I read in July about a malfunction requiring thirteen astronauts in the ISS to share one toilet?)
Anyway, the local hardware store for which the ad was written had them in stock, and I “should have one for every toilet” in my house. At a mere $39.99 each, plus tax, all I had to lay out was $119.97 for “total peace of mind, day and night. And—they come in assorted decorator colors, from basic white to lavender and Mandarin red! Also, imitation pine, oak, mahogany and birch!”
I couldn’t wait for my shower to end.
There was a line in the plumbing department at my local hardware store, and as I waited my turn a well-dressed man approached me and asked, politely, what I had against ordinary wooden toilet seats. “Nothing,” I told him, “but sometimes going as often as twice a night, I either forget to lower the seat, or I drop it and it goes off like a Walther, 7.65. Scares the hell out of my wife, daughter and mother-in-law. Not to mention the dog!”
“Have you ever considered,” he asked, “the number of people these new seats will put on the unemployment line? Woodsmen, arborists, lathe operators, painters, tool-and-die makers—the list is unending.”
“Aren’t these new toilet seats made of wood?”
“Of course not. Polyethylene. Form rubber. Acrylics. Not an ounce of wood in any of ‘em. If you were a card-carrying member of the Birch John Society, you’d think twice before . . . ”
“Before what?” I wondered.
“You’d be more inclined to turn the other cheek, actually.”
Answers to Life’s Critical Questions 1 and 2:
1. What is the one sport in which neither the spectators nor the participants know the score or the leader until the game is over?
Boxing
2. What famous North American landmark is constantly moving backwards?
Niagara Falls (erosion)
More coming . . .
Comments (2)
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