The Most Useless Thing in the World

I moved to a new apartment just over a month ago and am finally settling in. I’ve met most of the neighbors. There’s the old shut in down the hall, the nice couple across from me, the man that wears sweat pants on the second floor; all perfectly nice folk. No one has complained about noise I’ve made or made noise that I’ve found vexing, although I am coming fresh from an apartment that built up extreme tolerance.

My old place was a dump in the noisiest corner of the world. It had a four lane street in front that was congested with traffic seven days a week. It had BART tracks thirty feet from the back window, and a ranchero music producer living in the garage beneath me making the worst God awful music you have ever heard in your entire life. Two restaurants sat on either side of it, bombarding me with noise and the never ending odor of cooking oil. It goes without saying that three years of that place was just enough to truly test one’s sanity. I feel I came out stronger in the end.

The new apartment is very small but it’s quiet and clean. Sun pours through the windows throughout the day. I realize now that when I started looking for a new place to live, sun was subconsciously at the top of my list. My old place was a dank hole really, the windows built in walls that never ever faced the sun directly no matter the time of year. There’s nothing like enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning (let’s face it, the high point of the day, everything goes downhill from there pretty much) and watching the sun bloom, feeling it’s heat actually press  through the glass onto your skin. So simple but a true luxury.

When I was in Ireland in September I learned that the Irish were actually taxed based on the size of their windows, you had to pay for the amount of sun you could enjoy in your dwelling. Makes sense to me, people should have to pay for the finer things.

This new place is nice but quite small, like a hobbit hole really (but with more sun). Also, like a hobbit hole, it is equipped with odd nooks and crannies. It took me the first month to figure out all these nooks and perfectly position my limited possessions into said crannies. It was exciting to go in the closet and find an extra shelf or a hook maybe, an odd compartment in the kitchen.

There were a few things left over from the person who oversaw the apartment during it’s vacancy (it was remodeled during that time, new floors, appliances, paint, etc.) A few items were left in the refrigerator, three things I think: horseradish sauce, mustard, and a half jar of olives. For some reason finding that combination of things made me want to yak right there in the refrigerator. I threw them out right away. There was also a pair of rubber gloves and a box of tissues left in the bathroom. I threw out the gloves too, kept the tissues.

There was one more thing left behind but I didn’t think much of it at first. In the kitchen there’s a plastic spindle to put your paper towels on that fits between a shelf. I thought it was handy and was thankful to whoever left it.

During the second week I replaced the towels while I was listening to a basketball game on my phone. As I went along my business I started hearing what sounded like the music of an ice cream truck, right there in the kitchen. Being eleven o’clock at night it was highly improbable that it was an actual ice cream truck, plus the window was closed in the kitchen. I surmised that it was bleeding in from the basketball game and left it at that.

Some days later I was in the kitchen cleaning up and listening to my phone, my NPR app this time (my relationship with NPR is on again off again. I listen for six months until I just can’t take their voices and their lame public radio jokes, at which point I take six months off and listen to podcasts) when the same ice cream truck music started playing again. Exact same circumstances, but this time louder. I actually entertained the thought that the music was coming from the NPR broadcast until I realized how utterly insane that was. How the hell could the same ice cream truck be barreling through Terry Gross’s studio only days after crashing a Warriors/Blazers game?    

I turned off my phone and the music continued playing, the jingle jangle of the tune taking on a sinister lilt. I stuck my head into every nook and cranny of the kitchen until the music was playing right in my ear. It was the paper towels, or to be exact, the plastic spindle that the paper towels sat on.

I had just stuck it through a new roll when the music started playing, my squeezing it had caused the tune to start. I pulled the towels off and examined the spindle. It was long white plastic with a gold “Made in China” sticker prominently stuck on the side. My mind tried to stretch itself around the idea that far off in China, in some creaky draft filled industrial warehouse, it was some poor bastard’s job to place a tiny music device inside a plastic paper towel spindel.

All my mind could muster was why. Why would someone design this? Why would someone build this? Why in the hell would someone purchase this?? Was it for a blind person, so they would know they had successfully replaced the paper towels? Was it for the other members of a household? When the ice cream music played they could all breathe easier knowing that someone had fulfilled their responsibility and replaced the paper towels?

I stood in my tiny kitchen and held the paper towel spindle in my fingers knowing, deep down in the darker recesses of my consciousness, that millions upon million of useless items just like this exist in our world. Day to day, I turn my mind away from the fact that companies sell millions of these sort of plastic doohickies to millions of people that walk through Dollar Stores and off the grid hardware depot’s. But deep down I’m well aware that millions of musical spindles and other bullshit are bought up and kept in people’s kitchens until they inevitably end up where they were meant to be all along: a landfill.

Well, I for one refuse to let that play out. I’m keeping my music playing paper towel spindle forever. Or at least until I move out of this place.

01-13-13