December 9, 2008
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1 Yesterday I watched as Christmas decorations began to go up in the living room .
2 Right near the end, everything popped off the wall due to push pins.
3 Second time this week that push pins failed. I tried using them to put a poster on the door in my classroom. The first one held the poster for around a second. The poster fell on my head, almost slicing my left eyeball.
4 Knowing full well that I'd get better results if I got it started and then tapped it with a hammer, I scanned the classroom for a hammer.
5 There was none, not immediately.
6 I put the poster back up, tried to push in the push pin. It wouldn't budge past a precarious sticking. But it did hold the thing a little longer, long enough for me to do a more thorough investigation into a hammer.
7 I couldn't find one.
8 I pined for the days I had a tool cabinet in the Theatre.
9 Then I remembered that we never had a hammer worth a damn there either!
10 I looked around for some alternative to the simple hammer.
11 I saw a thick flower vase that needed a serious Windex job.
12 Perfect.
13 Nah. I remember a time I would have given it a whirl, but in my advanced age, I've gotten WAY smarter than that.
14 I decided to use the bottom part instead of the middle.
15 jk.
16 I did find a three-hole punch from around 1932, when they built 'em to last. I picked it up, walked to the door, and wound up, ready to give that push pin a good whack.
17 I clobbered the thing and the push pin went flying.
18 Turns out that the bottom of the hole punch was made of pliable rubber, which served perfectly well as a push pin remover.
19 I might also mention that our doors have some thick lacquer that is push-pin resistant, which I'm coming to believe is most things except human flesh.
20 And war maps.
21 At that point, I decided that there's only one answer to any hardware challenge.
22 Duct tape.
23 I busted out a roll of Gorilla Tape.
24 Last time I used Gorilla Tape I removed three teeth.
25 But this project had gone too far. And you don't EVER want to be an inanimate object that tries three or four times to get the best of me. Not if you don't wish to sustain permanent crookedness.
26 You'll wind up making me jump up and down like Yosemite Sam and hurling you into the Red Sea.
27 So in my wiser years I decided simply to forget the push pin, but not after publicly censuring all push pins as among the most useless items in a junk drawer.
28 Using the Gorilla Tape I put the poster up in seconds.
29 It was crooked as hell, but it was up.
30 I then decided to clean up and go home. I was out the door when I looked at the poster, which was in a window on my door. It was way crooked. People who walk up to my classroom would readily see that the poster was crooked.
31 What would my mother think?
32 I thought of Mom, and decided to spend the next ten minutes making it completely straight and nice.
33 When I closed my door to leave, I looked and thought it looked pretty spiffy.
34 I left somewhat later than I had wanted, but got that poster looking good.
35 I also decided never to use push pins again. I hope nobody out there is in the push pin business because I don't want you to lose your job or anything.
36 Well that's it for this morning. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
37 Have a beautiful Wednesday.
38 Peace.
~H~
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