So, I'm at a gas station filling up, in preparation for the next leg of the weekend road trip. I decide I'd better call ahead. I go inside and ask the two twenty-somethings working behind the counter, "You all got a pay phone?"
Their eyes could not have bugged out more had I pulled a gun and said, "This is a stickup."
Finally, one recovers enough to say, "Um, yeah, on the other side of the building." He waves his hand wildly in that direction. Maybe he was trying to shoo me outside.
I walk out, walk back in, see them still looking at each other, and say, "You probably haven't heard that question in about three years, right?"
They nod wordlessly.
I try to play the hipster card. "Yeah, I threw my cell phone away when I left L.A."
They were not impressed.
8 comments:
Along the same line, I was in Home Depot a couple weeks ago and asked the youmg hispanic clerk where I would find the single edge razor blades. This puzzled him. It seems he didn't know what a razor blade was. I tried describing it to him and what its function is and so on, but it stumped him. It seems that the young generation shaves with electric razors or throw away type razors that don't have removable blades and so they've never seen a razor blade.
You probably know also that no one knows what a wedging knife is anymore either. That tool that's been a wedging knife for 50 years is now called a "utility knife."
My father has the same complaint about finding razor blades, although I think he's a double-edged man. I have seen single-edged blades recently, but they look like they might not fit in razors, because they have an extra wrap of metal along the non-cutting end, I think to hold them in some kind of scraping tool.
I didn't know about the name "wedging knife." Makes me feel young! I've been saying "utility knife" for what seems like a very long time. BTW, the phrase "wedging knife," when encased in quote marks, returns three Google hits. Three!
I googled up wedging knife to see what they said, and none of the entries are what I was talking about. Maybe it was a term just used by roofers or a local thing here or something. When you're cutting roof shingles and you have to go around chimneys or vents or something you had to cut little "wedges" out of the shingles. That mey be where the term came from. In sewing and upholstery sewers cut what they called "darts" when they had to go around curves with cloth. Those darts were little "wedges" that were cut out also. Maybe it's an upholster's term. BTW the OED says that wedge is an informal term for a hero sandwich. Ever heard of that one? Not me.
Using "wedge" to mean a kind of sandwich (aka "sub", "hero", and "hoagie") was common in the greater NYC area when I was growing up. My all-time favorite pizza place still calls them by this name on their wall menu.
The roofers that I have seen use a slightly different kind of knife, or at least, a different blade. After scraping my knuckles for way too long, I bought a second utility knife just for cutting shingles. The blade has a hooked end, rather than a straight cutting edge, and works much better. I believe carpet installers prefer this type of blade, too.
Second reason to have two knives: My regular utility knife has a feature that allows me to change blades without using tools. Usually, this is usually great. However, when cutting shingles, the blade tends to get pulled out of the knife, so for this application, I like to have a knife that requires a screwdriver to change blades.
On the good news side, when KK and I were antiquing in Lee, Mass., we did see a leather strop dangling near the 25-cent used paperbacks.
One hopes that the sole purpose of said strop was to discipline browsers who reshelve out of alphabetical order.
When my aunt started teaching school back in the 1930s she got my grandfather to show her how to use the strop on the backsides of her pupils so that it really stung but did not leave bruises and marks. Alas, this is probably also a lost art. If you listen to the old Baby Snooks radio shows from the early days of radio, you'll realize that at the end of every show she got beaten with a leather belt for some minor infraction or misunderstanding. It's kind of shocking to hear these days, but apparently the standard way kids were raised in those days.
Re-shelving out of order deserves something more serious than a stropping, but if you're going to resort to that, one hopes that the proprietor is sophisticated enough to do it without leaving marks so that nothing can be proven in the inevitable lawsuit. You only have to flog a couple, you know, to really get the attention of the rest of the patrons.
You're probably familiar with H.L. Mencken's great essay propounding that we return to public floggings in the center of town. His premise being that for white collar crimes a monetary fine is meaningless. Whatever fine is imposed it's easily paid by the corporation or the individual out of his inflated stock options and he feels no real pain. Whereas if we tied the head of Enron to a stake and publicly flogged him there would be a certain satisfaction for the wronged and it would be a real deterent to future transgressions.
I don't know what to feel about stropping kids. Mostly, I'm against it, but I can remember tales from friends about only needing to be spanked once for something. That seems somehow more efficient than endless time-outs and groundings.
My own corporal punishment memories aren't readily accessible. Maybe that says one thing, and maybe it says another.
I'm not familiar with the Mencken essay, but my visceral reaction to Ken Lay, et al, was that they should be placed in a large room with all of the people that they screwed. Audience optional, at the request of the worker bees.
Of course, vengeance, while momentarily satisying, is not really the best way to go about running a justice system for an entire country, especially over the long term. While I hate that these guys have enough money to buy themselves out of trouble, or at worst, into a short stay in a Club Fed prison, I can't really advocate letting my gut rule my head here.
I think we're on the same page about the mis-shelvers, though.
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