Tag Instruction Manual

Can I have that in writing

Michael 9 Comments

Last week I bought a set of book ends. Plain acrylic book ends you put on a bookshelf to hold the books that don’t stretch all the way across the shelf. Not fancy. Not decorative. Plain L-shaped hunks of plastic designed to do nothing but hold other things up. Although not patented until 1877, they have certainly been around since there have been books. They are as utilitarian as doorknobs or shoelaces. Things that just are. Why then am I devoting so much space to the humble bookend? It wasn’t the bookends that caught my attention when I first opened the box, aquiver with anticipation that finally I can keep my books from toppling over. It was the piece of paper within the box. The – ahem – instructions for use.

I saw a post on one of the social media sites (which I don’t remember for they are becoming like 1980s era GM cars), “in a 1960s a car’s owners’ manual had instructions on setting the gap on the spark plugs; today’s warns you not to drink the battery acid.” I thought that was cute but it could be accurate. Oh, not the 1960s reference. I do indeed recall those cars. In fact, I remember a time when on the driver’s door post, in addition to the sticker indicating the recommended air pressure, there was one also noting the recommended carburetor fuel flow, the manual including details how to make those adjustments. No, I was certain the reference to not drinking the battery acid had to have been hyperbole. And then I discovered instructions for how to use book ends.

About a month ago I bought a new easel. Artist easels have been around about as long as book ends. Although they have more parts than bookends, and moving parts to boot, there are not many ways to incorrectly stand an easel. In fact, I can think of no way to get it wrong. Yet, when I opened that box, sitting on top of the collapsed wooden frame was a four-page instruction booklet. I poured over those instructions looking for the secret to paint like Rembrandt but all I found was that I should “secure the painting surface securely.” You would think if they were going to go through the trouble of hiring someone to write operating instructions, they could have at least hired someone who knows how to use a thesaurus.

I get it. The people who make car batteries really don’t want you to crack open the battery case and suck out the “juice” no matter how long you’ve been on the side of the road waiting for service and how thirsty you got while waiting. That’s a dumb idea. And I get that somebody somewhere must have gotten exactly that thirsty, or we wouldn’t be discussing ways to discourage people from drinking battery acid. I don’t get it. Even if you used it wrong, what fate would befall you from the incorrect use of a bookend (a plastic bookend!) that would get a personal injury lawyer kicking his lips?

My warning to all of you, check those scissors, tape, ribbons, and bows before you do any gift wrapping this week for instructions. You don’t want to be the first one at the emergency room trying to explain you did what with your ribbon!

So little of this year is left. Was it as you expected or did it take a different turn? We tell a tale of how unexpected things turn out to be most welcome in the latest Uplift! (It’s just a quick 3 minute read.)

00900F64-3294-4FB8-954E-CFFC590FF09F

Euphemistically Yours

Michael 2 Comments

I was going to write a light, breezy post about something humorous that happened to me. But all of that changed when I saw what was on my coffee table. Let me start in the middle. (The beginning would make this just WAAAAYYYYYYYY too long.) A couple of weeks ago I bought a new television. Sometime over the weekend I read the instruction manual. At least I got around to it eventually. Actually I didn’t get around to it. It somehow ended up on the table instead of the recycling bin and as I was walking it over to said bin it fell out of my hands and broke open. And that’s when I started reading.

At first I wasn’t sure I was really reading it. I thought that maybe I was having a dream but one of those dreams that is so lifelike that you wake up thinking that you really did just have lunch with Aunt Ella even though she died 12 years ago and even more that you don’t have an Aunt Ella. Now that’s a dream. But I thought that maybe that’s exactly what I was having because no company on Earth could actually put into writing what I was reading right there in black and white.

About halfway through the “IMPORTANT NOTICES” was, in bold letters, “End of Life Directives.” This is why I at first thought that I was having and/or had had a dream. And probably a bad dream. To someone who spent 40 years in health care, “End of Life” has a very specific meaning. Usually, no, always, end of life means someone’s life has ended. Died. Checked out. Kicked the bucket. 86’d on out of here. Gone. Never to return. Dead.

On top of it, I’ve spent the last few years in and out of hospitals where the first thing anybody asks (after “are you bleeding?”) is, “Do you have a living will or advance directives?” And just last week the dialysis clinic social worker brought to me a stack of papers to be signed for this year and at the top of the stack was a pre-formatted form labeled “End of Life Directives.”

So you can see why when I saw that associated with an Open Box Internet Special yet still over-priced television set I thought I was hallucinating. Or at the very least way past my bedtime. We have enough things that are challenged, sufficient opportunities, plenty of stuff that is deprived, depressed or disadvantaged, that we don’t need to borrow an actual sentiment to be euphemistic for something that really doesn’t need to be spoken of gently.

Exactly what is this “end of life” that the manufacturers of electronic components are afraid to call a spade? Apparently, as I learned upon further reading, it’s when the TV has reached the end of its usefulness to me and the manufacturer wants to make me aware that there are environmentally responsible means of disposal that are at my umm, disposal.

I know it’s terribly politically incorrect to call a shovel a shovel but hasn’t the need to call everything anything but whatever thing it is gone too far now? We can’t even put in an instruction manual that this thing you just bought might break, fail, quit, or stop working. We have to speak gently so that if you actually paid full price for the item you won’t file an wrongful breakdown suit against the manufacturer. Bull shit. It will break and when it does either recycle it or throw it away. Those are your choices. Directives or not.

But if I should happen to outlive the newest electronic member of my family I will be certain to dispose of it in a responsible and thoughtful manner. I’ll hold a respectful gathering of its friends, we’ll have a non-denominational service with a few of the other appliances offering their thoughts and best wishes for the survivors and afterwards some light refreshments and fellowship. We will then gently load the life-challenged inanimate object into the back of my pre-hybrid automobile, drive several times around the county looking for a recycling center that accepts electronics, pay $1 per pound or $45 per dropoff whichever is less, and then hightail it back home. In air-conditioned comfort.

California will be proud.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?