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Ancient law: never throw away scissors. Or can openers ...

It is some ancient tradition or belief system. One whose roots are lost in the tortuous once-hollow ribbons of time, blocked by centuries of sclerotic irrationality intermixed, confusedly, with an occasional random truth. 

Never throw away certain items. 

Why would you, when they still work? The can opener still opened. Kind of. The scissors still cut. Most things, anyway. Paper, thin cardboard. 

Here's the proof sitting, opened, on the table: an 800-gram can of pears; Australian, not Chinese or Mexican or Thai or wherever else they can these things. Topped by my old Swing-a-Way can opener. A little crinkly around the edges. But open nonetheless. It was a bit of a twist. Metal must be harder these days. Everything else is. Have you tried opening a shrink-wrapped pack of, I don't know, flank steak? You know, that semi-hard plastic that has a thinner seal with a gripping point that gives you a millimetre to grasp between thumb and forefinger and that is so strong that, instead, you reach for the ... scissors*. No wait, we were talking, first, about can openers. So the Swing-a-Way still opens. Maybe I should sharpen it. or loosen it, even. I had to admit it had stiffened over the years. Decades? I examined the gripping wheel, that notched one that runs under the little eave-like protrusion on the can. Looked fine, but how would I know? I looked at the cutting wheel. Seemed okay. Maybe a little ... blunt. Must be twenty, thirty years old. 

The truth dawned on me, as they say, wrongly. It was late evening. The truth punched a hole in my ancient belief. This can opener was no longer serviceable. I needed a new one. This one, grasped by my hand from age {current less x decades since purchase} had possibly opened ten thousand cans, but since I had never counted it might only have been 9,956. How could I throw it out just 44 cans before its ten thousandth? There's that irrationality again.

I bought a new one the next day at Harris Scarfe ("30% off all Homewares"). I came home and opened a can of tomatoes. It ran around the can like a prize greyhound, and there were no jagged bits of metal edge around the top of the can, just a clean edge. I was still in denial: "I bet it won't last as long as the old one," I said to no-one in particular.

I will attempt to show why people retain things in the next post. There must be a reason.

*I have never seen anyone throw out scissors. They just surreptitiously place them in a dark drawer somewhere, hoping that one of the ancient gods of sharpening (Hephaestus, Regin, Vulcan etc) will somehow come along restore them to usefulness. This is how we still, unconsciously, live in a world bound by mythology.


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