 |
|
|
|
|
Point of View
Where did all those old razors end up?
By Carl Heintze
The other day while looking in the medicine chest for something I noticed a small slot at its back. For a minute I couldn't think what it was. Then it dawned on me it was where I used to slip double-edged safety razor blades for safety's sake.
Back in those days medicine chests were made that way, because back in those days men shaved with safety razors.
I used to shave with a safety razor myself and I suppose I must have deposited blades in that very slot. Not anymore, though. Now I use an electric razor.
My discovery set me off on a strange tack.
First, I got to wondering where the razor blades I deposited in the slot went. Did they fall to the ground under the house, there to lie endangering anyone who crawled through the crawl space?
Or had the house builders thought of that, and did the blades, instead, drop between the 2-by-4 studs that make up the wall? And, if this had happened, would someone sometime in the distant future, when the house was torn down, find them and wonder what they were?
Perhaps--although I admit this is unlikely--they would become an archeological treasure centuries from now, like the debris in ancient Egyptian tombs or the junk found in ruined cities in Mexico.
This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Recently I read of an archeologist who basically spent her time sifting through the remains of an ancient outhouse. She was interested in what the people who once had used the privy ate.
That's the way it is with archeologists. They deal in the trash that's left behind by those who lived from a few hundred to a few thousand years ago.
Trash tells them a lot.
I'm not so sure it speaks to the rest of us.
They know what they're looking for. To the rest of us it's just trash, but to them it is gold, not very often pure gold, but, at least, the gold of knowledge about the past.
So looking at the slot in the medicine chest wall and thinking about those rusty razor blades somewhere in the wall of the house, I could see the scientists of the early 22nd or 23rd century puzzling over these thin little pieces of sharp metal, trying to understand what they were for.
Somehow, I had the feeling they would not immediately be associated with how men removed hair from their faces.
But I hoped they would finally figure out what the blades were for. I guessed that if they did, the latter day archeologists would have a hard time understanding why men had used such harsh methods. In their time a couple of hundred or more years from now, because we believe in progress, we would have to assume that facial hair somehow would be zapped off electronically.
Or perhaps in future civilizations men might be born with engineered genes which would keep them from having facial hair in the first place.
Beards might be optional. You could use a pill to grow them or, maybe, even use a pill to get rid of them.
This led me to ponder what the archeologists of the future are going to think about our age, in general. Are they going to wonder at all those strange masts we once erected on our rooftops to catch television signals? Might they not think they are some kind of religious symbol, an offering to the gods, perhaps, or a means of identifying ourselves as true believers in something.
What might they think of the Shark Tank, for instance, better known as the San Jose Arena? Someone has proposed erecting a giant fin atop it, which would move about when the Sharks are playing hockey inside. That would certainly throw the archeologists of the future. They might well take it as some kind of cathedral where worship services were held and sacrifices were made.
Clearly, there is a thin line between what we use in every day life and what the archeologists are going to think we use it for a few centuries hence. Supposition may well be more powerful than reality with time. It's not only history that gets bent as time passes, it's reality.
So, I am thinking about the razor blade slot and wondering what to do about it. At first I thought of crawling under the house to see if the blades fell there. But I've thought of an easier solution.
I'm going to write a note for the archeologists of the future and slip it down the slot. That way when they find the razor blades, they'll also find out what they were for.
I'm going to write this: "These are safety razor blades. They once were fitted in a safety razor with which I daily shaved my face. I disposed of the old dull blades by dropping them down here. I don't use them any more. Neither does anyone else. P.S. Watch out. They are sharp."
|
|
|
|
Saratoga, California Since 1955
