Pay no attention to that lazy, carnivorous zipper behind the curtain
April 23, 2003
The zipper was patented on August 29, 1893, and it has been tormenting people ever since. The fact that I was born on the same date 58 years later seems prophetic, because zippers and I have never seen eye to eye. Except for that time I walked past a seven-foot basketball player.
The first zippers, big surprise, did not work worth a darn. Their inventor thought they had promise however, so he set up a booth at the Chicago World’s Fair.
It was estimated that as many as 20 million people could have sauntered by before the fair closed. To the dismay of the world’s fair zipper pusher, only twenty were tempted to buy his evil looking devices.
His enthusiasm was dampened considerably by this failure and his invention went back on the shelf. He should have won some kind of award for patience tough, for a World’s Fair lasts a year and that means he sold one of his monuments to ineptitude every two and a half weeks.
He had at least one thing in common with me, for I could not sell a bible to the pope. But if it took even two and a half hours to make a sale, I’d be looking for a new job, so there the similarities end.
Twenty years later another gentleman dug out and tweaked the zipper patent and talked a company into installing some in their new line of trousers. They didn’t work too badly, but there was one minor problem.
After the pants were washed once, the zippers rusted shut. I hate it when that happens!
Once again, the zipper clan were relegated to the back shelf. That was most likely OK with them, for my experience with zippers has taught me that they prefer an early retirement.
A long, fruitful life of drudgery like the rest of us have does not suit the taste of the Zipper Boys, no sir. Most of them work for a few months and then lock up and spend the rest of their days sight-seeing.
Anyway, after another decade or so of blissful lounging on the proverbial shelf, it was the misfortune of the zippers to come to the attention of one B.F. Goodrich. The innovative old warhorse decided they were perfect for his new rubber galoshes, and the zipper-age began in earnest.
Personally, I liked the galoshes with the big buckles better, though like may be too strong of a word to describe any relationship with the clunky galoshes. They could stomp a mud puddle like crazy though, so they weren’t all bad.
If zippers were animals, they would definitely be carnivore. Probably in the gator family, for they have an insatiable appetite for raw flesh.
That hunger is their primary reason for working as long as they do, at least for the pygmies of the pants-zipper tribe. Their elongated cousins in the coat-clan get less opportunity to bite and are much lazier, so they are ready, willing and able to quit at any time.
“Zip it up” is a popular phrase used to advise another person to shut their mouth if they know what is good for them. I could imagine somebody saying it to me if I started regaling them with a tale about oh, zippers or something.
I don’t remember using it much in the past, but the more I think about it the more I like the idea of people having zippers installed on their lips.
Not everybody, for I surely don’t want any on mine.
I just want the rude, obnoxious folks to get them, for today’s society seems to be spawning them in record numbers and my years are growing weary of listening to them.
There may be a surplus of the old rust-prone zippers somewhere and I think they would make fine lip-zips.