OPINION: Things to think about
Another week, another column, under the freshly equipped moniker of “Things to think about,” inspired by my quippy outro for each column. Enter five new items of varying obscurity, ready to be ranked by the only person alive actually qualified to rank things. You can’t outrank the ranker, but I encourage you to try!
Unfortunately, though, he was unavailable, so I’m filling in for him for this article. I hope you can understand.
The five items on the roster this week are a martini glass, leg warmers, a candy cane, a bottle of syrup, and a picture frame.
In last place, leg warmers. As a kid, I adorned all of my pencils with little pencil grippers, the plastic, glittery multi-colored ones that everyone secretly wanted to eat. Most people denied that they ever chewed on them, but I was out and proud about it. I have no shame.
Leg warmers remind me of those little pencil grippers, although it’s probably less socially acceptable to chew on leg warmers. Especially if they’re connected to a leg.
In fourth place is a martini glass. Similar to a child-sized cup at a restaurant, a martini glass offers a whopping one and a half sips of drink for the now-thirsty customer, all for the savvy price of too much money. On top of that, bartenders will put ice cubes, plural, into your drink, giving you even less beverage to savor. Rude.
Of course, the bartender anticipates this anger, counteracting it with a tiny little umbrella to solve all your problems. What am I going to do with an umbrella this small? Shield the fragile remains of my hope and dignity from the rain? Sit underneath it at a very, very small beach?
In third place is the candy cane. I imagine that in the Candyland cinematic universe, old people use these to get around, rather than a normal cane. On that note, I feel like we should replace normal walking canes with ginormous, sized-up candy canes! It would be very campy. You could even suck on the bottom of the cane to sharpen it, and use it to shoo away enemies! Murder isn’t illegal if you do it with a candy cane, that’s just the plot of Candyland 2: Electric Boogaloo.
In second place is the picture frame. Many shoppers buy picture frames with the intent of taking out the placeholder picture and replacing it with a loved one. However, we should normalize buying picture frames and keeping the generic photos in them when putting them up for display. It’s a great conversation starter, as many will ask who the person in the picture is.
I have no idea who the person is, but the visitor doesn’t have to know that. Maybe it’s Jeff, third cousin who recently came back from Albania and is unhealthily obsessed with mustard. Maybe it’s Linda, Jeff’s wife who knows he has a mustard problem but is too scared to say anything about it.
In first place is a bottle of syrup. Everything’s upside down in Australia, according to a widely held online trope. I had to investigate, so I went to Australia to see if everything is indeed upside down. As soon as I stepped out of the plane and into the airport, I immediately fell upwards onto the ceiling and couldn’t get down, so I guess that proves my point.
They had to call a fire department to get me down. And as I laid there, pinned to the ceiling due to a mysterious upside-down gravity, a question crossed my mind. Since everything’s upside down here, is syrup called “ma-am down?”
Things to think about.
Write to Joey Erickson at joseph.erickson.2@mnsu.edu