Dear Blog Reader
I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Finally, the days are getting noticeably longer. It is nice to see that all of the parts of our landscape are still there. It has been quite a while since they have been seen in the light of day. Leave in the dark, home in the dark, that mid-November to mid-February always seems to stretch on and on. To all of my Greenland, or Norway fans, I apologize for the whining. We all have our cross to bear. I recognize that yours is bigger than mine.
We have turned the corner. The seed order has arrived. The snap dragons and celosia seeds have been delivered to the greenhouse to get starts going. The pruning is nearly done at my favorite orchard. The sap in the maple trees is starting to rise. And speaking of bears, I suppose they are starting to stir from their hibernation. I know that I am starting to rouse from bed a bit easier everyday. All we have to do is get through that mud pit called March and the two weeks of Janpril. Then, it will be off to the grass mowing and gardening races.
The topic of today’s missive presented itself about 4 weeks ago. A lot has happened since then. The American’s solidified their claim on most boring people in the world by winning Olympic Curling gold. The spring floods have returned to the mid south. And the national gun debate has been reignited at the cost of 17 lives. This time the debate is clouded by failures of local and federal law enforcement with a bit of cowardice to make us all shake our heads.
No, about 4 weeks ago it exploded on the news. It appears that a consumer advocacy group called a news conference in DC and took on big detergent. You would have thought that the holy grail had been found. It was all over my Facebook pages for days to come. However, in doing the exhaustive research that goes into this blog, I found out that it has been a hot topic, making an annual reboot, since 2012 when Chuck Schumer proudly proclaimed “I saw one on my staffer’s desk, and I wanted to eat it.” A little self control Chuck, not to mention take a refresher course on office etiquette. What are you doing rummaging around a staffer’s desk for snacks? That staffer probably makes $30,000 a year. Go buy your own d&#%ned snacks.
Of course, the emphasis has shifted. In 2012, the focus was on young children and adults with dementia eating them and getting sick and in 10 cases dying, a tragedy. Any steps that can be taken to eliminate those deaths are a good thing. Those steps have been taken. Child resistant packaging, PSA’s, etc. But now the focus is on high school and college kids creating a social media sensation called the Tide Challenge. Google it. I refuse to try to use my wordsmithing skills describing idiots.
As you can tell, I feel no sympathy for this iteration of the Tide menace. I like those little, squishy, transparent packages of grime busting goodness. I fill up the washer with cloths. I reach in to the container throw one in and am off to write my blog. I don’t have to worry about where the measuring cup is. Did I take it to the barn to measure herbicide, or poke a hole it one corner and create a funnel hack for pouring oil into the car? And who hasn’t had a puddle of detergent eating the enamel paint off of the top of the dryer because the no spill spout wasn’t no spill when you twisted the measuring lid back on top of the bottle?
No detergent pods are a nice thing and they are about to be taken away because of the youth of America. As the lovely Miss Beverly said, “once again another nice thing we can’t have because of kids.” Thankfully, the lovely Miss Beverly went proactive and bought a dozen packages to “Tide” over this little crisis.
Grace our lovely daughter was pretty excited and pointed out that this may be the first thing that her mom and dad couldn’t blame on the millennial generation. It’s true. This one is on the un-named generation. Actually, it has been named. The internet just hasn’t settled on a name. Gen-Z, iGen, post-millennial are in the running. I am currently voting for post-millennia because you have to be dumb as a post to eat detergent.
I do want to step back for a second and question the idea that this is a story. To the best of my knowledge gained from less than exhaustive internet analysis, 10 people have died since 2012 from the ingestion of detergent pods. A little perspective; last year over 20,000 people died from synthetic opioid overdoses. The trend on that disturbing number looks like a Sherpa going up the side of Everest. Why aren’t we taking on big synthetic opioids? It is hard. Addiction is hard. There are no easy answers there. Rather than talk about a difficult problem, society spends four weeks wringing its hands that Johnny and Mary walked around spitting bubbles for a few hours. When I was growing up, that is how we identified who got caught cussing by their mom.
Maybe the mom’s of America were doing more than cleaning up our language or encouraging us to think about lying to her again. I think inadvertently they were helping us keep nice things.
Take care.
Roger
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