Sunday, September 16, 2018

Hick Needs Curb Feelers

Just like you can't teach an old dog new tricks...it's hard to get vintage Hick on the right path. He's always running into things. There was that suitcase (left sitting by the end table for a couple months) that he inexplicably fell over one night. I can verify that if a Hick falls in a living room and no one is there...he still makes a tremendous noise.

I understand that Hick is blind in his left eye. And that his belly eclipses his feet. But that's no excuse for running into things that have been in the same place for 25 years.

A few nights ago, I had just settled down in my dark basement lair, a bowl of chili at my left elbow, and an ice cream sandwich in my right hand. Mmm...ice cream. Save A Lot has been out of my individual ice cream cups, so I had to take a lesser treat, and get Neapolitan Ice Cream Sandwiches. That's the kind with a strawberry end, a chocolate end, and vanilla in-between. As I recall, I'd just finished the chocolate end when up in the kitchen there came such a clatter that I PUT DOWN MY ICE CREAM!

Seriously. I was afraid Hick was hurt. I shoved my bifocals on top of my head, took the baggie of ice off my knee, and rushed to the bottom of the basement steps at my fastest speed. I didn't look down, lest I see a snail passing me up.

"ARE YOU OKAY!"

"Yeah. I'm fine."

"What was that noise?"

"Oh, I hit the scale again when I walked in the kitchen."

From the sound of it, he punted that scale through the uprights from 63 yards out. The scale (and various incarnations of it) has sat beside FRIG II, and formerly the original FRIG, since we moved in. The scale is not in the way. There's a lip of the wall that sticks out about six inches. The living room carpet switches to linoleum. I can't imagine how Hick would walk so close to FRIG II to hit that scale.

I guess this must have happened a time or two when I wasn't home, or I would have recognized the sound. Maybe Hick needs a set of curb feelers for Christmas.

14 comments:

  1. A great gift for the man who has everything (& a shed to put it in)!!

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    1. I'm sure he would like such a gift, and might even build a separate shed with a new theme for retro auto accessories.

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  2. I used to trip like that a lot back when I had more than a few DWC's a night, I don't think that is Hick's issue.

    What ever happened to curb-feelers? Did they go the way of suicide nobs?

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    1. Yeah, not Hick's problem. He might have a beer with pizza every couple of months. Or a Jack and Diet Mountain Dew (too lazy to walk down to the basement mini fridge for a Diet Coke) intermittently.

      I don't know what happened to those, but Hick waxes nostalgic on the colored lights mounted under the car to shine on the pavement.

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    2. What the heck is a suicide knob?

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    3. It's a knob you put on the steering wheel, so it's easy to make turns one-handed. I think it was popular in the 1950s.

      https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/why-are-suicide-knobs-called-so.321496/

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  3. Cars now have sensors that give you all sorts of great info. Now if they could be adapted to fit people, all would be well.

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  4. Those things are kerb feelers? I always though they were some kind of weirdly placed radio antenna, perhaps for spy radio for private detectives.

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    1. That's kind of like the time I returned to school in August and saw a clear rectangle hanging from my ceiling. I just KNEW it was some kind of fancy see-through computer monitor that I could put things on for the kids to see.

      It was the cover of one of my light panels hanging open, waiting for the custodian to replace fluorescent bulbs.

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  5. A bowl of chili and an ice cream sandwich...my idea of a good meal, too. But why do you have a scale by the fridge? An incentive?

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    1. If only THAT would work! No, we just didn't have a place for it in the bathrooms. And the boys used to get on, excited over every pound they GAINED!

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  6. Where do you purchase them? I got rid of our scales. I do not want to know how much I weigh! I get weighed when I go to the clinic. I can usually tell if I am up or down by the way my clothes fit.

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    1. I imagine you can find just about anything on the innernets!

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