More Off Than On
I have a blender. Actually, I had two, both from the bargain shelf.
One was the stick kind, you put it in a big glass together with your stuff and you bash it about. It had a small motor and it was the cheapest brand. The stick worked fine until some water got in it. It rusted stuck. I opened it, lubed it, twisted the motor shaft with a pair of pliars to unstick it, lubed it some more, and I even put it back together. The stick worked fine for a few months until it began to emit smoke and fire. It still blended fine, but I didn’t like the big sparks that shone through the case. Who even knew it was translucent? And the smell of smoke made my smoothies less appetizing. Into the trash. Gone. I got my year out of it.
The other blender is a traditional glass jar nestled over a big motor, with big rotating blades at the bottom. A classic. It has only 5 speeds, but that’s really 4 too many. I decided to go for the big motor but the no-name brand. This big hefty blender easily handled everything I put into it. Until it stopped working. Completely. And it required a special screwdriver to take apart, so I found a repair shop.
Now, the geniuses of electronics are working on quantum computers and advanced chips, they don’t sit in little shops filled with broken appliances on side streets waiting for me to bop in with my broken blender. I know that. We all know that. I should have seen it coming. I did, but not exactly.
Cleverly, I left the big heavy, breakable, glass top at home, and carried in the broken bottom section with the motor. He took it. I came back when he said. He demonstrated it working, I paid him. There’s a little switch on the top of the thing, like the button switch in the fridge door that turns on the light. This switch prevents the motor from turning when the glass top is not attached. He just pushed it down with his finger to make it work. That was the switch that was broken, that he replaced.
So I took it home, put the glass jar on top, and it sprang to life! After playing with the speeds I realized what this genius had done. The new switch was in backwards. When it’s turned off, the blender is on. But when set to one of it’s many speeds, it’s off. So, now I have 4 or 5 settings for off. One for on. Off is on. And all the ons are off.
I could have brought it back, but what the heck. It works great and I just have to remember to work it backward. There are more ways for a machine to not work than to work. This reminds me of that. I should keep it in mind every day. It even applies to my body. There are more ways to say the wrong thing than to say the right thing. It’s very cultural; Even wise.
I’ll keep it.