Manafacturing Facts

B”H

I’ve been noticing (and becoming quite annoyed) how easily people and society are manipulated or how quickly they simply they accept things for the way they are. I’m not talking about major things (though that is equally ridiculous) but about everyday assumptions. Things about daily life that people just accept without question.

Passport photos for example. My mother took me out to Walgreen’s to get me one. They charge who knows what for that photo. Everyone knows that you have to get a passport photo. It has to be a passport photo. I didn’t get it. I mentioned that it was the same thing as getting a regular miniature photo printed. We could just take our own digital camera and take a picture, then have it printed for a fraction of the cost since it would be charged as a photo and not a passport photo. Of course, you can’t do that. You have to make a passport photo.

The same day again I was at the pet store. We wanted to get a ball to play w/ the dog. They had a ball for six bucks. Someone bought that ball without blinking. I was about to do the same thing but then I realized how absurd that was. Why buy a ball for six dollars when I could get it anywhere else for 75 cents? But then it wouldn’t be a dog ball. It would just be a ball. No one thinks about that. They just do it.

Already on a roll, I confronted my mother about buying club soda. The notion had circulated around our community that adding club soda instead of regular water to challah dough was better. Everyone accepted that including me. After all, if that’s what they said then it must be so! But yesterday I actually allowed myself to think about it for two seconds. No it didn’t help the challah at all. As you knead it all the carbonation escapes and you just have regular water. It’s the dumbest idea ever, completely pointless. Yet it’s got all these women buying club soda every time because that’s just the best way to make it right?

Just how unnecessarily inconvenient and inefficient are our lives because we just mold to accepted practice without thinking about how things could really work or what could actually be the best way to do something? How many absurd assumptions do we let control our lives? Pop-rocks and soda right? Many say eating those together will make your stomach explode or at least cause a stomachache. Do you think if that were true they wouldn’t change the formula of something to make it safe? Don’t you think you’d see it in the news? Yet many people think this stupid thing because they were told so (the same thing goes for diet coke and mentos. If you drink Diet Coke and eat mentos at the same time, nothing will happen). The next time you decide to inconvenience yourself, pay for something, complete a chore, or avoid something, give yourself at least two seconds to consider whether it’s actually practical, or perhaps it could be a wives’ tale.