Things Could Be Much Better, Or Maybe They'd Just Be Worse

The Best of Andy Rooney

There's still a lot of work to be done on the design of all the things we use in our everyday lives:

-- They still haven't come up with the perfect phone. When I use my desk phone, I always ending up trying to hold the receiver between my shoulder and my ear while I write something down on an envelope with a pencil.

If I hold the phone in one hand and a pencil in the other, the envelope moves because I don't have another hand with which to hold it.

-- One of the most obvious signs of overpopulation is the size of our telephone books. You can't keep one near the phone anymore because there isn't enough room and it's too heavy to hold.

-- Every car I've ever owned had some design flaw. It's a constant source of irritation to me that I can't leave the trunk unlocked. Whether I lock the trunk of my car or not is my business, not the manufacturer's.

-- You have to have both a washing machine and a dryer. I'd love to have a combination machine. Once the clothes were in there, I could go to the movies.

-- Will someone tell me why no one has ever made a square umbrella? It is also obvious to me that umbrella makers intentionally make their umbrellas so they'll break or come apart easily. They may even design them so they're easy to lose.

-- Since I started shaving with an electric razor 20 years ago, I've bought or been given half a dozen of them. Some have been pretty good and some have been terrible. I still have every razor I ever bought, including the boxes they came in, because I don't throw one out even if I never use it. When it's hot, I sometimes shave with a blade because I can't dry my face enough to use an electric razor.

I recently acquired an electric razor with which you can shave when your face is wet. You can even use shaving cream.

-- It's imperative that someone design an electrical outlet system that eliminates the maze of wires all of us have behind our television sets.

-- Inventors have been very busy with new ways to make coffee. I'm impressed with the machine you can set at night to make coffee in the morning, although we don't have one. When it starts up at the time you set, it grinds the beans, heats the water and makes the coffee. The only thing it doesn't do is wash the cups when you've finished breakfast.

I still put all the ground coffee in a pan, add all the hot water to it and then pour the whole mess through a Chemex filter paper. With automatic coffee makers, I'm always nervous about whether all the grounds are getting wet.

-- A nail clipper is one tool that forces all of us to be ambidextrous, because there's no way you can cut the fingernails on your right hand with your right hand.

-- Someone should invent a foolproof neck band that keeps hair from going down a man's neck when he's getting a haircut.

Overall, we are making progress, though.

(This classic Andy Rooney column was originally published Aug. 15, 1991.)

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