I bought new batteries this weekend.
That may seem like a simple statement to you. It’s not. That’s because I’m a man.
Men don’t buy batteries. You know why? Because we JUST bought batteries last year, and there’s no way we used up the entire pack already. They’re around here somewhere. I’m not going to go out and buy a whole new pack of batteries when there are perfectly good ones around here somewhere.
So I’ll continue to use my electric shaver that’s so close to dead that it’s basically sawing the whiskers off my chin one by one. And my electric toothbrush magically becomes a regular toothbrush. Kind of like how an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs.
And if I’m lucky enough to ever find a battery lying around somewhere, it’s never a new battery. It’s always just an old battery that when I replaced it I kept it around just in case. What that just in case actually was, I have no idea. But maybe there’s .01% more juice in it, so I feel like I accomplished something in helping keep whatever electronic tool I have functioning for just a little bit longer.
The same goes for razor blades. Do you know how expensive those shits are? To get an idea of how men use razor blades, please consult this 100% accurate graph:
And just like with the batteries, we might change that last blade to another one that we have rattling around in our drawer. That will of course end up being one of the first 3 blades that we kept, subconsciously knowing that the time would come when that last blade would actually be worse than one of the blades we discarded for it. Of course we won’t throw that last one away. We’ll keep it. Just in case.
Do you see what I’m getting at? We never get new things because the old things are just good enough to get by. And even if they’re not good enough, we make do anyway.
Which is why it was such a drastic move to get new batteries. And you know what?
IT WAS AMAZING.
My chin hairs don’t feel like they are being pulled individually. Everything is even. The left side doesn’t look better because the razor basically ran out of juice by the time I got to the right side.
And my toothbrush? Holy shit. It’s like I’m power blasting the plaque off my teeth. I hardly need to move it myself. It’s kind of got a mind of its own. My head tingles after I use it. IT TINGLES I TELL YOU!
Emboldened by this new turn of events, I got some new razor blades. Now it hardly feels like I’m shaving. I finally understand those commercials when they say it glides. Oh, how long it has been since a razor glided down my neck and didn’t feel like a rusty push lawnmower on my skin.
This is when it starts to get dangerous, though. What other parts of my life have suffered because of my lack of new things? Now I need new lightbulbs. Brighter ones! Deodorant that’s not at the end of its life. Underwear with no holes. Knives that are actually sharp! BARBECUE SAUCE WHERE I DON’T HAVE TO SHAKE THE BOTTLE UPSIDE DOWN FOR 20 MINUTES JUST TO GET A LITTLE FART OF BARBECUE SAUCE ON MY DAMN BURGER! THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!
Then I see how much a two-pack of underwear costs. You’re kidding me. That much?
Screw it. If it still has a waistband, it stays in the rotation.
New batteries were a nice change of pace, I’ll admit it, but let’s not get too crazy here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see if I can get a little more toothpaste out of this.
Love it!