. . . because I can’t bring myself to call them “hacks.” When my Brooklyn grandmother’s health started to fail and she moved in with us in the early ’80’s, she set up a little gauzy, plasticky apartment upstairs and installed the first TV we ever had. She liked watching Benny Hill, and also football, because of the tight, shiny pants. But she would also watch professional hockey. Every time one of the players bumped into each other, she would shout, “HOCK!”
I was thinking of her as I filled out a genetic questionnaire in which I just basically wrote CANCERCANCERCANCER in big letters over the whole thing and then whispered “also crazy.” But I’m not feeling discouraged. I’m the kind of person who gets things done! So I present to you my Tuesday list of very helpful life HOCKS.
- Keep a pair of tongs next to your couch. That way, when you’re using your phone as a flashlight so you can figure out what’s holed up behind the couch and terrifying the cat, and you accidentally drop your phone down there, you can get your phone without sticking your hand down there.
Extra life hock: It’s probably just an apple core. Probably not an opossum.
Extra extra life hock: When someone pees on the couch, take the cover off the cushion. This is what Martha Stewart does, and she’s a felon. HOCK!
2. Fix your fan with this simple forking trick.
Say, bunky. Do you have weirdly-designed bedroom with strange little miniature windows where no air gets in? Do your children further stifle air flow by filling their entire living space with mountains of garbage? Do you feel bad for them anyway, because even bad children shouldn’t sweat themselves to death every night? So do you offer them your fan, which is the last surviving fan in the house, even though you bought eleven fans last summer? And did you then find out that the fan makes a horrible clattering, chattering sound when you plug it in, because the little jerks have been standing on it (presumably to help them reach the top of their garbage pile to put more garbage on), and now the fan blades scrape the plastic guard as they spin?
Simply take a fork, bend, and insert it as shown. Plug it in and enjoy the sweet, sweet garbage breeze for us, God’s garbage people. HOCK!
3. Add the library’s address to your Amazon account. That way, when you lose that great literary work A Merry Shopkins Christmas and they suspended your library card again, you can easily and efficiently send a replacement book on its way without having to look anyone in the faceballs.
Just remember to put on your Amazon shopping bra first.
It doesn’t get any more easy and efficient than that! Except for maybe not always losing the– NO, I said it doesn’t get anymore easy and efficient than that. HOCK!
4. Need to potty train a toddler, but she has pop rocks in her brain and you just can’t face it?
Find yourself a teenager and pay her to do it! No kidding. A big bag of candy, a $20 bill, and a package of MLP panties as an end prize, and when someone pees on the couch, just shout “MARTHA STEWART” and someone has to go wash the cover for you. HOCK HOCK HOCK HOCK HOCK!
The only trick is, you need to start planning this hock 19 years previously. You know what to do. Or if you don’t, go watch some Benny Hill.
Image via Wikipedia (Creative Commons)
