Ted Wilson Reviews the World: My Metal Detector

★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)

Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of the world. Today I am reviewing my metal detector.

I’m not sure if they still make metal detectors or not, so if you don’t know what one is, don’t be too hard on yourself. Metal detectors are basically what they sound like — machines that detect metal. You may be wondering why such a machine would exist when metal is already pretty easy to spot.

It turns out, there’s a lot of metal hidden in the ground that is invisible to the human eye because the human eye can’t see through dirt. The metal hidden underground can be anything from an old coin dropped by one of America’s earliest settlers, to an ancient sword. You never know what you’re going to find! So far about 98% of the things I’ve found have been unidentifiable chunks of rusted metal.

I’m keeping all the chunks I find to see if they can be assembled into something incredible, like a working tractor. The other 2% of things I’ve found were a coin purse I lost in my yard during hurricane Gloria in 1985. The coin purse was empty when I lost it and still empty when I found it.

Possibly the greatest thing about my metal detector is that it doubles as a tool for getting things down from high places. Or things from regular heights while laying down. Just the other day I needed to reach a box of cereal in the cupboard but didn’t feel like getting off the kitchen floor. So I used the metal detector to prod the cereal box off the counter until it tipped over and spilled all over me. A broom stick could have done the same thing, but I don’t own one of those just in case they attract witches.

I took apart my metal detector to find out how it worked and I have to say, I understand even less of it now. There’s not a whole lot to it. It’s a stick shape with a circle on the end, filled with wires and some circuits and stuff like that. I don’t know why I was expecting to understand how a machine can sense metal. I don’t even know how a toaster works.

My metal detector is a great conversation starter. Like when it detects a piece of metal — if someone is walking by — I can say, “Looks like it found something!” Or if someone sees me trying to detect metal, I can run across the park to them and if I get there before they get into their car I can say, “This is my metal detector.”

One day I know I will run out of metal to detect because all the metal will have been found. That will be a sad day for my metal detector. Without any purpose, it won’t be a metal detector. It won’t be a detector of any kind. It will be nothing. Maybe I will bury it and if someone ever invents a plastic detector, they will find mine.

BEST FEATURE: The beeping noise it makes when it has detected metal sounds just like my alarm clock.
WORST FEATURE: It doesn’t work in ponds. Water just completely breaks it.

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing our new President, Hillary Clinton.