Category: Things I’ve learned (Page 1 of 4)

I am a pretty intelligent person, all in all. I have degrees from top universities, kids called me the brain in school and only the truly dumb have ever accused me of being dumb.  But I have pretty much no practical abilities.  I don’t pay attention to the world around me, and therefore I don’t really know how it works.  This became clear to me today when i was hanging clothing to dry.

Our drier is broken.  Rather than try to figure out how to fix it – like any other intelligent person would do -, and tired of bugging my husband to take a look, I decided to start hanging the clothing to dry in the backyard.  So far, so good. I managed to install the cloth line between two trees without any major problems (though I keep having to re-tie it, as it becomes lower and lower).  But one cloth line is not enough for a whole load of laundry, so I’ve been hanging shirts on hangers from the branches of trees.  Trouble is, many of my t-shirts have wide necks and fall off the hangers.  I’d been hanging wet t-shirts on hangers from about a week, when I finally figured out what the purpose of those little loops of fabric under the sleeves is: to hook them into the little hooks in the hangers, to prevent the garment from falling.  Did I mention how I am 45 years old and I only figured this out now?

But here is a better one.   Today, still 45, I figured out that you can use those little hooks in the hanger to trap the shirts and make sure they don’t fall.  All these years I could have been preventing my shirts from falling off the hammers in my closet – if I had just spent a couple of minutes paying attention to the structure of the hanger!

And just now, before I started this blog article, I’ve had another revelation.  A couple of years ago I noticed I had developed ugly corns on the toes of one of my feet.  I might have had them for years before, of course.  The corns did puzzle me and I tried to figure out why I had them.  The most likely explanation – shoes that were rubbing and creating the calluses – didn’t really work, and the shoes I wear specifically do not rub that area.  Plus I started noticing that the corns remained year round no matter what type of shoes I wore.

Well, I think I finally figured out their cause.  When I sit at my computer, I just realized, I actually curl my toes on that foot and rest my foot on the ground, on those toes – just where the corns are.  I don’t know how often I do this, but clearly often enough to create those corns.  Now it’s time to test my theory. I’ll try to remove them and then be conscious to not curl my toes on the ground and see if they come back.