By NA Nabooko
Pittsboro, NC – Several years ago, maybe even a decade, I penned a Chatham Chatlist post entitled “Just How Safe Is A Safety Pin?” I thought it was a real knee slapper. Maybe I have improved since then, but the quality of safety pins have gone to the dogs. The quality absolutely stinks. But, mind you, they are still incredibly sharp and dangerous. Seems they may be made from a poor grade recycled tinfoil.
You must have realized by now there is a story behind these complaints. Ok, here it goes. I’m like in a second hand store and there is a big bundle of very rough looking burlap for sale. I tried to open it fully to examine, but that wasn’t practical. But I could see there was colorful wording and designs. I bought it for a rainy day project.
Well, today wasn’t rainy but cold enough to stifle an errant winter Zallamore.
The whole thing was about the size of a twin bed cover. It was three sections, which I thought were stitched together. But wait. Not stitched, but held together with el cheepo safety pins. Tiny el cheepo safety pins. Maybe 75 or 80 of them. They had somehow entwined themselves with strands of the burlap jute. It took me well over an hour to get one “seam” detached. Every moment fearing I would experience that horrible stab that is so incredibly painful and a bringer of small but prolific blood spurts. I was lucky. After all that, I ended up with three quite interesting Columbian Coffee Burlap bags. And of course dozens of cheap worthless safety pins I wouldn’t let near anything I own. Not even trusting it to shore up some shamefully lax elastic in some decades old clothing.
If they ever have a scrap metal collection drive.
Maybe if someone is influential, they could talk The Chatlist moderator to dig up my old “ Just how safe is a safety pin” and reprint it. We could all use a good knee slapper about now . . .