The Magical Handerkerchief

The Magical Handkerchief

Ah yes, I have often wanted to write about the “Greatest Generation” however many times I delete what I write out of respect. Last week while in Tahhhget shopping for kids school clothes, I came across a package of Handkerchiefs. Who the hell uses Handkerchiefs anymore and why did they ever exist in the first place? The definition of a Handkerchief is “a small piece of linen, silk or other fabric (Maybe Magical Fabric) usually square and used especially for wiping ones nose, eyes, face etc. or for decorative purposes.”

As a kid, I remember many men including my dad who had their handkerchief handy in their pocket for any emergency event like a cold; where they had a runny nose or a cough or during allergy season when they would sneeze 10 times an hour or when they were hot and needed to wipe the sweat of their forehead or even better yet when their son had some dirt on their face, they would have their Handkerchief handy where they could lick it and wipe that dirt off my face.

Are you frickin kidding me?

Now back then, I simply obeyed as a normal kid would do and thought this was a good thing. They had the recipe for removing the dirt from my face. They had a recipe all right! After spending a summer day in the heat fighting the allergies, feeling the sneezing fit coming on they could reach for that Handkerchief from their pocket and throw it to their nose faster than Chuck Connors (The Rifle man), could draw his rife to kill a bad guy. Then they would unload everything possible into that handkerchief .  Sometimes it looked like they may blow a gasket. All the snot, mucous, and every piece of foreign internal substance that wasn’t connected to an organ landed in that handkerchief.  Then they would fold the handkerchief for the final sweep. This was to clean up any substance that the original blowout did not catch. Then my favorite pahtt was when they folded that handkerchief and put in back in their pocket for the next catastrophic blow… This series of events would be repeated throughout the entire day. Say it’s late afternoon and they are experiencing some more internal volcanic activity… here it comes again, They reach in like a well-trained first responder and grab the handkerchief and unfold it and put it to their nose as if it was a new Kleenex just taken from the box. Did they forget the several times throughout the day they have dumped all their nose waste into that rag? Do they think it’s a magical handkerchief that makes all the snot and mucous disappear once it is folded and put in their pocket? Then they take that same doo rag out to wipe the spec of dirt of my face spreading disease faster than a preschool kid who has Ebola.  There were occasions where the release was so bad that they would have been better to get a wet-vac and suck that shit from their nose and then deliver it to the local Haz-Mat drop off.

Sterling, Cooper Draper and Price (Mad Men) must have been behind the Handkerchief marketing campaign…I can see it now.  The Handkerchief …SNOT a problem anymore! ….