[1314] in Humor
HUMOR: Water Pik brand water pick
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Tue Feb 20 09:45:40 1996
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 09:34:34 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 18:29:53 -0800
From: connie@interserve.com (Connie Kleinjans)
From: janos@netcom.com (Janos Gereben)
JON CARROLL -- Be Buster Keaton! Use a Water Pick!
ONE OF THE best abbreviations from the online world is RTFM, which
stands for ``Read The Fine Manual.'' It is often invoked, because
human beings have a deep aversion to reading the fine manual.
Often the feeling is mutual; often the manual has a deep aversion to
human beings. Often it fails to answer their most obvious questions;
often it presents the information in precisely the wrong order.
My Water Pik-brand water pick, for instance, uses the word ``prime''
three paragraphs before defining it. ``First, prime your Water Pik . .
.'' That means, of course, make sure that it is divisible only by
itself and 1.
Math humor: It's the next big thing.
At least the water pick has a manual. Have you ever noticed how many
rent-a-cars fail to include an owner's manual in the glove
compartment? And have you ever noticed how many big stupid men (and
here I refer to myself) just drive right off without stopping to learn
the dashboard configuration?
And then there's an immediate rainstorm and the big stupid man is
turning on his radio and dimming his lights and adjusting his side
mirror, searching for the windshield wiper controls because he's
already on the freeway and he can't see anything at all and he can't
even think because THE BIG 99.9 IS BLASTING AT YOU FIVE IN A ROW BABY
DO IT!
I once rented an English Ford for a week and never did find the horn.
Turned out it was located on a little button at the end of the turn
signal lever. Had there been a manual, I might have finally turned to
it when all else failed.
As indeed I eventually turned to my Water Pik- brand water pick
manual. You thought we'd never get back to the ostensible topic of the
column and yet here we are just in time for the second section.
AWATER PICK is an invitation to slapstick. It is a squirt gun
masquerading as a dental hygiene product. It is not a dangerous
product, although it can wreak havoc.
I was a water pick virgin when I purchased my Water Pik-brand water
pick. There's been a lot of dentistry in my life lately, and this new
device is a way of preventing more dentistry in the future. My
periodontist believes that without water picks, man is doomed.
My periodontist is a very serious man. You want that in a perio guy.
So I primed my pick. I filled the ``reservoir'' (plastic bucket) with
water and pointed the pick at the sink and waited for water to spurt
out. Then I put the cute color-coded flexible tip onto the pick,
although of course I forgot to turn off the pump so I got a face-full
of water traveling at high speeds! What fun!
SO THEN I turned off the pump and put the tip on the pick and put the
tip in my mouth and then turned on the pump and oh dear the tip is
pointing outwards so there's water all over the mirror. So I turned
the tip inwards, forgetting just for a moment that I had set it on
``5,'' which is Water Pik shorthand for the pressure used to put out
industrial fires, and since I had just had periodontal work my what
pain there was.
``Aiiiyeeee,'' I remarked, and pulled the pick from my mouth but of
course not turning it off so there was water all over the room, walls
and floor and precious ancient artifacts hanging from the walls, and
also in my eyes so I could not see the switch to turn off my Water
Pik-brand water pick.
So finally I do turn it off. Finally that happens. And I stand there
breathing heavily with water dripping from my eyebrows, and I'm
thinking that dentures, you know, you put them in, you take them out,
how bad can it be?
But this is the old thinking, the bad thinking. Water Pik-brand water
picks are my spiritual teachers. I read the manual, which warns me to
start at the gentlest setting, like I can't figure that out for
myself.
Now I use it all the time and this oilcloth apron is hardly necessary
at all.
