IDON'T know, maybe I'm nuts or maybe I'm just a little wary of anything new, but it seems to take me ages to catch on to the simple things that everyone else has figured out.
Maybe I'm like my father. When colour television first appeared on the scene, my dad took one look and said: ''Hmmm, something else to break down.'' He wanted to wait until they'd worked out all the kinks. My husband might offer that it is because I am extremely stubborn and more like Frank Sinatra than I am like my dad. Once I've decided that there is a way to do something, I have decided that there is only one way - My Way.
It has taken me 37 years to acknowledge that if you put those multi-coloured rubber rings around the base of your keys it actually does save you having to try the rest of the annoyingly similar looking keys in the front door. I should also add that I have recently been forced to admit that if you remove from the ring the keys that don't seem to fit any lock at all you can save yourself more than a little time, aggravation and usage of the ''F'' word when trying to get inside the flat to that ringing telephone. I put the extra keys on one of the over 3,957 ''Dan Ryan's'' key rings we have managed to amass and then I give them to the kids so that they can make believe they are mommy and swear at the front door.
I'll let you in on another revelation of mine. It look me a while to actually take the plunge, but I am now helplessly and hopelessly attached to an electrical appliance (and no, it's not that electrical appliance). My latest discovery is a handy-dandy little household device which is usually advertised on television in tandem with a free telephone number and the phrase ''Now what would you pay?'' Plugged into the elephantine plastic appendage, laughingly called an electrical adaptor in this part of the world, recharging its powerful little motor is my Dust Buster.
I am pretty sure it was first designed to be used as a car vacuum cleaner, able to get into nooks and crannies unfettered by an electrical cord. It is a simple and practical device. For years I have passed vendors on the way to my chiropodist's office (that's another column) demonstrating the wonders of this battery-operated beauty as it sucks up buttons and peanut shells and uncooked rice. And I was never once tempted to have it suck up the stuff in my own home. Well, I am here to tell you that I have seen the light! On a whim (I am a compulsively impulsive shopper but that too is another column).
I walked into a Mannings store in search of something completely unrelated to dust or busts and on my way to the checkout counter I saw a veritable mountain of little crumb suckers. I paid my money and took the first step on the road to a fun-filled, vacuum packed life.