January 21, 2015. You Always Learn Something Here.

January 21, 2015.  You Always Learn Something Here.  Annie keeps losing her orange peelers.  She has several, but no matter how many she has, the loss of one is a major disaster.  I say to her, "Why don't you buy a dozen so when you lose one or more, you don't panic?"

"I'll find it," she says.  And, she nearly always does.  But, not until she has turned the house upside down.

Yesterday, we were in a kitchen store and I found a new kind of orange peeler.  It is the finger peeler shown in the second picture, above.  I tried to get Annie to buy it.  She wouldn't because it isn't the one she is accustomed to.

The one she is accustomed to is shown in the first picture.  It was invented by a 19 year-old Wilbur Blank in 1938.  He invented it because he loved oranges but disliked peeling them by hand.  He married, had seven children and finally found a company to manufacture the peeler in the 1970s.  He sent a peeler to Andy Rooney who misplaced it for three more years before finding it on his desk and featuring the peeler on 60 Minutes as the invention that "changed my life."  That endorsement was followed by an in-home interview between Andy and Wilbur.  Wilbur died in 1997 and I discovered on the Internet that you can still buy his Qwik Orange Peeler on a website of that name.  Evidently, some of his seven children are still in the business.

The same store had the stick peelers that Annie likes.  So, I also bought four of those.  It will take us a while to lose all four.  This morning she peeled an orange with her peeler and I peeled another with the finger peeler.  They both did what they are designed to do.  Although, mine peeled the orange faster.

Ouch!