According to infomercials and all of the latest gadgets presented on television, we are a nation of idiots.
Seriously. There is not one thing around the house or in the car, in the garden or in the garage that we are able to do efficiently. It’s amazing that we’re not all running into walls on a regular basis.
Thank goodness the cheap, and often plastic, items promoted in these commercials exist. Otherwise, we would never be able to peel an egg, scramble an egg, crack an egg, or pretty much do anything involving eggs. We wouldn’t be able to weed our yards, make a non-soggy meatloaf, or bedazzle our previously ugly and non-shiny clothes.
The products always make things easier, bigger, better, brighter…
Dang, we must have been living in complete hell before and didn’t even know it.
You know how I know this? Because in the commercials, the “actors” show us how awful life was before a gadget came along.
Watch a woman try to crack an egg. You read that correctly…
Crack. An. Egg.
She can’t crack it. Or she cracks it and smashes the entire egg—shell and yolk—into the pan or bowl. Or, she goes to crack it, and it cracks but then falls all over the floor.
And who needs that mess? Am I right?
I’ve been cracking eggs since I was a little girl. It’s not brain surgery. It’s not rocket science. Here, I can describe it in easy-to-follow steps. Ready?
Pick up an egg.
Okay, were you able to handle that part? You sure? Good. Let’s move on.
Tap the side of the egg on the edge of a bowl.
Did you get that? Really? Because I can go over that step again if you need me to.
Please note that you may hear a sudden, quiet cracking sound. This means that, um, you just cracked the egg. It’s okay. You meant to do that.
Then—and this is the really, really difficult part—you hold each end of the egg in one of your hands and pull it apart where the crack is, letting the egg and the white fall into the aforementioned bowl.
Ta-da!!! You, my friend, have just cracked an egg into a bowl.
See, that was so easy. And no gadget needed!
I wonder about the actors on these infomercials, especially when the products they are demonstrating involve food.
Have they never eaten something they’ve cooked themselves? Do you mean to tell me that up until this moment, the very moment that they got this miracle-working gadget, they were unable to feed themselves because they couldn’t make food?
Wow…really just…wow.
All the actors, no matter what the product is, show us how awful life was before.
Evidently, it was horrible.
I mean, I know that if I couldn’t trim my weeds faster, well, you had better take away my car keys because I might just drive myself off a bridge.
The commercials and infomercials always have happy endings, though. After the folks get the magic gadgets, their lives are transformed!
And oftentimes, the lighting in their homes is better, their hair and/or makeup looks fresher and neater, and they even look a little thinner too. Really.
But it’s the smiles on their faces, the utter joy they express, the almost-rapture like bliss…
Well, it’s making somebody buy this stuff.
I’d talk to you about this some more, but I just heard something on TV. It seems that I’ve been cleaning the tub wrong all these years.
And, goodness knows, my life simply will not be complete until I find out how to do it better.
Michele Wojciechowski, when’s she not buying stock in Ronco, writes Wojo’s World™ from Baltimore.