Busting My Knee

If you have ever gotten up in the middle of the night to get ahold of yourself only to bust your shin bone on a piece of furniture from China, I say to you welcome to America. Better yet, I say to you, welcome to manhood. Women live (and love) to fill our lives and our homes with useless objects most other like-minded human beings would regard as worthless. For instance, can anyone tell me what a doily is good for besides catching dust? A woman cannot possibly be happy with any open space in a home. Once they see any open spot within their estrogen-filled zip code they MUST fill that space with something "decorative" as soon as possible. Case in point, a few years ago I made an outside setting bench for my mom's front porch. We got it all sat in place to suit her; I walked away for what was probably five minutes for a drink of water only to return to see she already filled it with throw pillows. This brings back the all-important question, are they called that because they SHOULD be THROWN? In my estimation the answer is YES.

It makes no difference how handy or practical any household item is, if it's not pretty, in a woman's estimation it's got to go. On the other hand, if you would like to see a thirty-yard roll-off on my driveway on Monday morning all you need to do is ensure that I stub my toe on something worthless on Sunday night. One might say that my wife is a born saver and I am a born looser. My wife has no particular love for any of her personal objects; she just never gets rid of anything. Her high school annual does not get treated with any more reverence than a used popsicle stick, yet somehow neither gets discarded. Maybe she just has an allergy to trash cans.

Have any of you men out there taken more than five consecutive minutes to contemplate what a dust ruffle is for? You know, one of those useless frilly things that resides on the bottom side of a bed and hangs uselessly from your box spring. I happily put the kibosh on that problem and also got rid of my box spring. These days those things are made from the weakest wood and the cheapest fabric which means in rather short order they will start to sag. It's like being beat with a stick of low quality. I outthought the good people at Sealy at their own game by building a sturdy pedestal from scratch that includes deep drawers underneath for storage, minus the ruffle. One thing is for sure, the dust ruffle IS aptly named, because much like a doily its only real job is to catch dust and regularly requires washing.

The question of the day is this; why would any of us purposely fill our lives with more work. When my wife and I went through our amical "sleeping divorce" she tried desperately to get me to put a dust ruffle on my bed, of course I flatly refused. If it holds no practical use, I have no use for it. As near as I can tell the only real reason a person should have a dust ruffle is if they are trying to hide the useless crap that resides under the bed that we are too lazy to take to Goodwill or the landfill. Nobody can refute that as Americans our biggest sickness is filling our lives full of useless and needless crap. I mean let's be real, isn't it about time you parted with that leisure suit and platform shoes that you have not worn since Saturday Night Fever was in the theaters? What good is that letterman's jacket you still own from high school if you have no chance of fitting into it again? Take it from someone who knows, if you have a quarter-inch layer of dust on any apparel chances are its heydays are long gone. At that point they are about as practical as a ball point pen that has run out of ink.