13TH ROLLS IN A BAKER’S DOZEN 

You order a dozen rolls and the baker throws in a 13th roll for free. Once inside the bag, they all look the same to you. But that 13th roll knows that it is the free roll. And it assumes that you won’t respect it as much as the other dozen rolls you had to pay for. It thinks you might use it as pigeon food, for example, but never served on a nice breakfast table with fancy Irish butter and English marmalade.

13th rolls, like anything that is given for free, promptly loose their self-esteem. Lollipops in pediatricians’ offices feel the same way. And so do antibacterial wipes and liquids, available everywhere now, free of charge.

MEN’S NECKTIES 

Maybe only headbands and eye patches require less fabric to make.

The unsubstantiality of ties is best observed when they are put over generously cut shirts, or long, double-breasted trench coats.

Ties see themselves as whatever’s left on the clothing factory’s floor after a day’s work, byproducts of worthy garments, the gift of choice of cheap, lazy people without imaginations, bibs for drooling fools, unwilling symbols of the establishment, irrelevant, suffocating strips of fabric with fancy names on their way out of men’s wardrobes, just like it happened with suspenders.

When that day comes, expect to see a lot of them hanging by their own necks.

FRAGILE STICKERS 

Just like Stop signs in Italy and No Smoking signs in Russia, Fragile stickers all over the world get no respect. 

Although bright red and written in bold letters, they command no attention. Reverse psychology makes baggage handlers and delivery people give rougher-than-usual treatment to containers with Fragile stickers. Actually, putting a Fragile sticker on your package practically guarantees that it will arrive damaged at its destination. 

Travel bags checked in with Fragile stickers will show up in baggage areas fully open, their contents shamefully scattered all over conveyor belts for everyone to see.

Still, Fragile stickers keep pretending that they work, and people keep buying them. It’s one of those things we never learn, such as adopting chimpanzees as pets even after reading about people’s faces being ripped off by deceptively friendly primates.

CROCHET COVERS 

False prudes like the ladies who make them, crochet covers pretend to protect and beautify household items in order to feed their perversions.

You will see these handmade artifacts clinging to teapots, toilet lids, pillows, mason jars, toasters, toys, dog sweaters, doorknobs, and other victims, all disfigured by the same mediocre, repetitive patterns woven mechanically by hands disconnected from their brains.

Crochet covers will take the shape of whatever they cloak, and rob their soul, like parasitic vines climbing trees to suffocate them.

They will mask the age and reality of objects with their meaningless mandalas, making it look, to the outside world, that everything is well and under control.

HATS 

Overheard at the Department of Hat Complaints:

From a Pork Pie: “Hats can’t wear hats!”

From a Homburg: “We crown people’s heads, yet we’re not considered regal.”

From a Panama: “We rhyme with cats, rats, bats and fats.”

“And what’s so bad about that?” the clerk challenged the Panama, “scarf rhymes with barf, shoes rhyme with booze, and we never had a single complaint about that.

The Panama cleared its throat: “My cousin, a fine Fedora, was on a man’s head when the wind made him fly and land on the roof of a house. The man rang the bell and a deaf old lady opened the door. My hat is on your roof, the man said.

“Oh, it’s all right, the lady said, cats like going there because the tiles are warm.

“Not a cat, my hat! the man yelled.

“The lady replied: That’s strange, bats usually hide under the roof during the day.

“My hat, lady!

“How dare you call me a fat lady? she said, and slammed the door.

“My cousin was never seen again.

COTTON SWABS 

After being purchased and taken out of their sealed boxes, cotton swabs usually live with their heads or butts uncovered, in cups. For the untrained eyes of humans, both heads and butts look exactly the same.

Cotton swabs placed head-down, with their butts sticking up, are usually made fun by the ones who, although by mere chance, were put upright. The sad truth is, all of them have to live with their heads really close to the butts of other Cotton Swabs, sometimes even touching if there isn’t enough space.

When they see a hand approaching, Cotton swabs move surreptitiously, trying to avoid being picked. They know the horrors awaiting them: they will be forced inside hairy, greasy tunnels, and turned around until both their neat white ends become brownish and disheveled. After that, they’ll be thrown in a can of trash, and a lid will descend upon them, bringing total darkness.

As opposed to humans and some other animals, cotton swabs are only young enough to live while their manes are white.

RECEPTACLES 

Dear Dr. Hope:

I came to this world as a pencil holder and was perfectly happy with that. True, sometimes pencils had broken points and pens were missing their caps, but the consistency of my contents was very reassuring.

One day, though, they emptied me of all those writing instruments, filled me with cold water, and stuck a thorny rose inside me. The scratches still hurt.

Not too long after that, I was put up for sale at a thrift store for nearly nothing. Someone took me home and poured scalding hot coffee inside me. What’s next?

Dr. Hope, I don’t know anymore what I am, and what other tortures destiny holds for me.
I hope you can help me.

Ms. Disillusioned.

Dear Ms. Disillusioned:

Your identity crisis is very common for objects with similar shapes. We recently had a letter from a receptacle that started as a fruit bowl, became a foot soaking bucket, and ended up as a chamber pot. Degrading, for sure, but not the end of the world.

The important thing is to be regarded as useful, always. The option is the landfill, and unless you are used to a promiscuous lifestyle, I don’t think you would enjoy that.

Glad to be of help,

Dr. Hope

JEWISH QUARTERS 

When the Jews were expelled from Iberia, they had to leave all sorts of things behind. As they fled to other places around the world, their beautiful synagogues, stone-paved streets, baths, homes, and the tombstones of their ancestors remained undisturbed for many years; nobody wanted to move into the Jewish quarters, fearing that they’d be accused of being Jews with Christian names trying to avoid prosecution.

It’s important to note that buildings and public areas in ghettos don’t know much about prejudice, even if they live smack in the middle of where it happens. They also fail to realize that they’re too big and heavy to travel with their owners.

Feeling abandoned by the people who built and took care of them lovingly, and left, then rejected by everyone else for 500 years, they couldn’t imagine anything worse happening to them. 

And then the tourists arrived.