2023, Fantasy, Media, Mysteries, Travel

You Gotta Be Kidding Me…

37 Comments

I don’t spend much time looking at “the best things to buy” kinds of online ads, but yesterday afternoon, while lazing around watching re-runs of Columbo, I clicked on a “Unusual Items that Everybody Wants” lists.  Not sure what I was thinking.

The first item that made my jaw drop was a wristband that you use when you wash your face… to catch any water drips before they run down your arm.  Not sure why this is needed in life unless everybody washes their face differently than I do.

The next items that stopped me in my track was the “purse organizer” (above).  My very first thought was “who has 8 purses”?  Silly question since I sleep in a room next to someone who most likely have more than 8.  I’m sure she’s not alone.  Me?  One purse for everyday use and one fabric “State Fair” bag with a turtle on it that is the perfect size for what we need to take to the fair (money holder, coupon booklet, collapsible cookie holder, aspirin, address labels…).   If we weren’t State Fair aficionados, I would just have one purse.

My second thought was how in heaven’s name would you explain either of these items to someone living in the Middle Ages?  This was followed by a huge number of things that I can’t imagine trying to explain.  If you are suddenly transported to the year 1435, you probably shouldn’t mention ANYTHING about the times in which we live.  It’s a perfect way to end up on the 1435 version of the loony bin.  It never goes well in any time travel book I’ve ever read.

What would be the hardest thing to explain about our world to King Henry VI?

37 thoughts on “You Gotta Be Kidding Me…”

    1. I don’t even think you have to go that far back for corn on the cob to be mysterious. When I was in high school, we had a French foreign exchange student for a year and the first time we had a cookout and did corn on the cob, he had to be really coaxed an urge to eat it. (by the end of this year, he had been completely converted.)

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  2. hey hank
    did you check you your social media accounts this morning
    facebook twitter now x instagram and your stuff that pops up on chrome
    the email and skype
    the wechat and google calendar stuff
    gotta keep the scheduled stuff in front of you

    solar panels
    e cars
    air fryers and vaping weed

    ear buds
    amazon
    facetime ( remember when talking on the phone and seeing someone on the other end of the line was only feasible on dick tracy wrist radio and at disney lands future land expo?)
    roller blades and motorized scooters

    hey hank any veggie burgers in the freezer
    i quit eating meat 50 years ago
    any non alcoholic wine

    call door dash or grub hub for a quick dinner

    how about them twins
    are you going to the fair?

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  3. Schizophrenia. It’s likely that Henry VI suffered from that mental ailment. Medical science has made significant advances treating mental illness.
    No more bloodletting!

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

    1. Actually, scholars knew the earth was a globe all the way back to the Ancient Greeks, who calculated the circumference of the earth to an impressively close degree. The opposition to Columbus was not because people thought he’d fall off the edge of the world–that was a Victorian calumny to make themselves look more intelligent and sophisticated than their predecessors–but because they didn’t know there was a continent between Europe and Asia (Portuguese cod fishermen could have told them otherwise, of course, if anyone had listened). Everyone assumed Columbus would die of thirst in the middle of an empty ocean.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

      Liked by 4 people

      Reply

  5. Here’s something I couldn’t explain to anyone in the 21st century. It might somehow make more sense to Henry. This is just a short bit. There’s also a longer documentary:

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  6. What’s a collapsible cookie? I’m not familiar with those. I can understand, though, why you might need a holder to keep it from collapsing inopportunely.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. The cookie holder is collapsible. I always buy the small container of cookies, which comes in a cone, which is very unwieldy. So I dump the cookies from the cone into the container and as the day goes by and I eventually eat them up, I collapse the container, so it takes up less room in the turtle purse.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  7. Automobiles – Went to the Arts Center Saturday night to take tickets for concert – it’s 5 blocks away from here but we took the car, as we didn’t plan for time to walk or bike… People from even 150 years ago might be appalled that you’d need this vehicle to travel such a short distance.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. I had two errands today. One of them was at a neighbors house three doors up. I drove from my house to his house with the excuse that I was then going onto the other errand. It was really just a reason to have 60 more seconds of air-conditioning.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  9. I wonder if Henry would even recognize English as spoken and written today.

    Also, he might not understand the response of most women of today to his request for her hand in marriage. I have no doubt what my own response would be.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  11. Red Tape? How much did they deal with? Not peasants like I would have been. Last night SS hit me in the face with what I thought would be a big complication. I have to declare myself the payee for her SS, which means a visit to the local office. Went in 20 minutes ahead of opening, making me third in line. Man was very efficent and sympathetic. Took him 12 minutes to set it up. They send me paperwork to complete and send back.
    I was switching banks, which was how it came up in a phone call to SS last night. He took care of that. Switching to a bank close to me and not downtown and longstanding. One i ended up looks like it will fold, at least to me. These red tape things keep hitting me.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

    1. OK, I found this at https://www.thehistorycorner.org/articles-by-the-team/did-medieval-people-brush-their-teeth

      “The Eastern Medieval world was the first to popularise teeth brushing. Using a stick called a “miswak”, people would scrub their teeth until they felt clean (Kausar, p. 85)… For the most part, men, women and children brushed their teeth daily, either with a miswak, a cloth, their fingers or leaves. “

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. I have a new electric miswak. But I don’t have to think about how long to use it because it has a timer that tells me. Cuz obviously I can’t keep track of two minutes by myself.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply

      2. I seem to recall that one would take a certain softish kind of stick—one that could be chewed on the end to make it fibrous and pliable and that is what one would brush with.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

Leave a comment