The Readers' Exchange

THE READERS' EXCHANGE

Little known to the great many of the world's population, not of course, living in T.O. which considers itself to be the Centre of the Universe (which "It" is not: in fact recent scientific studies have shown the "Centre" to be a little known slum in one of the higher and more dangerous areas of downtown Lisbon: they had icky feral cats there and garbage!)

In any event to really know "man" one must read: "The Reader's Exchange" published in the Toronto Star every Saturday: it proves to any reader that the world is far more 'interesting' than your lowest dreams.

The "exchange" (and the following is all true) allows local Torontonians to publish helpful hints, time saving devices and ideas in the way that your Great Aunte "Gustie" might have exchanged, around the Bridge table at the local Sisters of Pithany luncheon; except back then, good common mob sense would have resulted in these people being, in a 'nice way', put off to the sidelines.

The hints can be roughly divided into the four following categories:

1) Really, really Dangerous;

2) So Cheap;

3) I Never Want to Go to Your House for Dinner; and

4) Just Plain Weird;


I)) REALLY REALLY DANGEROUS

a) Raisins:

It really is a challenge to get into the minds of these particular folk.

It starts with the first, very, very dangerous hint, in which a lady who thought that rather than have little kids eat raisins out of the little Sun Maid raisin boxes, you should buy a big box of Sun Maid raisins, and to save the environment (from all those little Sun Maid paper raisin boxes) put the raisins in those plastic thingies 35 mm film comes in. Kids love to eat raisins that way!

Soon after, many photographers began to write in warnings about the terrible dangers of photographic chemicals which will contaminate containers and cannot ever be washed off!

Imagine my terror as I thought, not about some Stepford like freaky 'Green' mother forcing a child to eat raisins from film canisters, but instead all the hash and grass I smoked in my youth that we all concealed in empty 35 mm film jars.

b) Ping Pong Balls

This particular writer was really bent out of shape about the cost of replacing ping pong balls which had been dented. While I first considered that he should go into the category of "cheap" the possible dreadful consequences of his 'hint' caused me to place him into the 'very, very dangerous category".

Mr. PP, as I will call him, suggested that if you have dented ping pong balls, you should place them in a pot of boiling water with the lid closed and they will re-inflate iradicating the dents. Now Canadian Tire does sell new undented ping pong balls for 25 to 50 cents a piece I would imagine, but that's beside the point.

Some reader the next week in a panic advised that he was an engineer of sorts and apparently boiling Ping Pong balls could lead to awful explosions of toxic gas and plastic. This lead me to be reminded of Jerry Hall's walk-in, in "Batman" as the work of 'Art'

c) Help My Lock! Ouch My Eyes!

Finally there is the WD-40 exchange. Here, in probably the most dangerous of all hints, a man suggested that when you had a car door lock that was frozen, one should take a can of WD-40 (this is aerosol pressurized petroleum lubricant) and place it on a hot stove element, heat it up and then spray it into your lock.

Ka-pow!

Tomorrow I will continue with Part 2) so cheap!