History

My mother is not going to be happy. I have made a firm break with tradition.

It's a small thing, so perhaps I overstate her response to my flouting of history and common decency.

The bright side, I suppose, is that I have struck out down a more utilitarian road, so perhaps that will vitiate her unhappiness.

You see, we hang our laundry up outside, on a line. We do this for a number of different reasons, all of which I shall spare you.

One day I got tired of collecting, not just the clothes, but also the clothes pins. Collecting them in the bag, then bringing the bag in along with th clothes. And when taking clothes out, I tired of trying to remember to take the bag of clothes pins out with me, hanging the bag on my free pinky finger while holding an armload of wet clothes.

It occurred to me to simply leave the pins where they were. It now seems so obvious. Not only is all that time and effort saved, but they are also pre-positioned so they are ready to go. Just pin one end of the garment, extend and boom! there is a pin pretty much right where you need it. Just squeeze, release, and you're on to the next garment.

I'm not sure why I choose to categorize this as heresy. My mother will probably not really care too much about it, in fact. But there are so many things that we do for no apparent reason, it is so easy to fall into routines of non-thinking, simply because that's the way it's always been. This isn't a good argument against gay marriage and it's not a good argument for collecting clothes pins. We need to think about the things that we do, judge them fairly and honestly, and move on. We keep what we want, we discard what we don't want.

And then we move on to more important matters...