I don’t know about you, but one of the tests of life is how you deal with everyday desperation. I’m not talking about the large, foreboding clouds of doom that blot out all joy, but the tiny little bits and pieces of life that somehow cause you to… improvise.
This subject was touched on by Gordon Keith on a local radio station, and I wanted to follow up on it.
Places where desperation happens:
The Kitchen
It’s morning. You’ve just awakened, and it’s time for your cereal. You’re on autopilot, grabbing the bowl, opening the box (well, not opening it, really, more like holding the useless flaps of cardboard back, because it never closed back up despite your best attempts to carefully separate the two pieces of the box top from each other while opening. Careful, careful…RIP), grabbing the milk, not even checking the expiration date on the milk, sloshing it into the bowl, and then you grab for the spoon.
And it’s not there. You check the dishwasher, but all the spoons are dirty. So you have some options:
- The Large Spoon – if you normally eat with a teaspoon, this is its older brother.
- The Serving Spoon or Ladle – something you deliberately have to open a different drawer to get. And worst of all:
- The Decorative Wooden Spoon That Was Hanging On The Wall – this is not really a spoon at all, but more like a wooden shim that’s been slightly dented by a smooth rock or something.
What’s worse is when you’re out of knives and you need something reasonably sharp to cut your leftover steak. Again, your options run the gamut:
- The Table Knife – there’s always one around somewhere, but you’d just used it to get the mayonnaise out of the jar.
- The Cleaver or Other Impossibly Large Implement of Doom – It’ll cut the food, but it may not be recognizable afterwards. Or:
- Scissors – especially those from a different room, or worst of all, your wife’s “good” scissors used only for sewing.
Another common place where we get desperate is
The Bathroom
When you’re taking a shower and you’ve run out of shampoo, what do you do?
- The Spouse Shampoo – despite it containing fifty-seven ingredients and leaving you smelling like lavender for the rest of the day.
- The Bar of Soap – Hey, its thick lather will make your day! Of course, there’s always
- The Dishwashing Soap – Yes, you trekked across the house, dripping a small river behind you, from the bathroom to the kitchen to get something resembling soap, even though you’ll smell like a lemon afterwards.
But it’s not just shampoo. No, what about toilet paper? Discussions of toilet paper alone tend to generate deep conversations, such as how much is enough for one sitting, etc., but what happens when you’re out?
- The Hippity-Hop to Another Bathroom – only useful when you’re at home.
- Paper Towels From the Dispenser – another “gotta be alone” technique.
- Napkins, Receipts, Whatever’s At Hand – by this point, you’re going to be hating life.
And still, there’s the joys of home ownership and its attendant repair needs:
Common Tools
I envy men who have all of their tools in neat little racks on top of workbenches in their garage. Heck, I even envy men who have their tools organized in a drawer somewhere in the house. For me, if I need a hammer, any tool will do: screwdrivers, wrenches, anything with some length, heft, and a flat surface will work. And if I’m without a screwdriver, hey, there’s always coins lying about the house! What about the odd occasion for a clamp? Rubber bands, baby! Wrenches? My hands are strong, and I can also use pliers or two knives held closely together.
In conclusion, I wonder if sometimes a little desperation is a good thing. It forces us to look at what we have and find alternative uses. Or, at the very least, it forces us to the store to get whatever we’re missing. Both of which are good things, except for when it’s a tool that you’ve purchased for the tenth time and can never find…