A Portion of Panic Attack by Sherri Grob of Murphysboro, IL

When in danger or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout,
Panic, Panic!

Oh my God! I’m in a panic, there are only four days left until Anne’s birthday and I haven’t gotten her anything yet. She even took the time to leave catalogs open, with particular items circled and annotated. She can be so considerate that way. While, I am so inconsiderate, since I haven’t done anything with her suggestions and now it’s all but too late to act. That is unless I spend as much for shipping as the gift would cost. That’s one way to pay for my mistake.

Fortunately for me, a co-worker alerted me to an alternative solution. He told me about a WSJ article that he had read. It is about some Amazon products that are creating quite a buzz. I’m an Amazon Prime member and get free two-day shipping, so this just might work. While researching the products discussed in Michael Phillips’ WSJ article, my first impressions were that they are certainly an eclectic lot. But before I buy online, I like to study other customer comments and get another point of view.

One popular item mentioned in this article is the Hutzler 571 banana slicer. This kitchen utensil has generated over 4,000 comments and at only $3.40 it certainly is affordable, although I notice that bananas are not included, so that would be an additional expense. I’m sure Anne is worth a bunch of bananas. I’ll just have to budget for them. One helpful commenter pointed out that this slicer works a lot better if you first peel the banana. Good to know! Another commenter complained that the slicer only worked on right-handed bananas and not the left-handed ones. Maybe I should buy two?

A few of the other items mentioned were books. Anne really loves books. The first one is entitled, “A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates”. Does this seem too esoteric? Remember her prime number science fair project. On closer examination, even though most of the numbers are random enough, the page numbers are entirely sequential, pretty sloppy editing if you ask me. “How to Avoid Huge Ships” seems like a good beach read, what with all the ore boats that pass by the cabin every summer’s day. Think of it as a mystery. Finally, there is “The 2009-2014 Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats in Greater China“. I’ve been thinking that it is about time to replace the outhouse’s toilet seats, why not wooden Chinese ones? Anne could hook them up to the Internet and we could check email while … wait this isn’t about Microsoft’s Outlook.

I think that you get the idea now. It’s not the product itself, but the comments about the product that makes the story. I’ll just have to gird my loins and go to the mall, drop some plastic and hopefully not get mauled in the process. I think that with Paducah last weekend, I peaked too early.