TED WILSON REVIEWS THE WORLD: SANDPAPER

★☆☆☆☆

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

Unlike tracing paper (which is amazing), sandpaper is the most useless of the papers. It’s near impossible to write on, and whatever message you needed to leave won’t be worth the cost of a ruined pen tip. Worst of all, sandpaper can barely be folded into a paper airplane, and any plane-like shape you can manage will make you the laughing stock of your neighborhood paper airplane contest.

Sandpaper is used to dull the corners of wood because trees aren’t soft enough. Dull corners are the safe way out, but imagine a life where every piece of furniture in your home has the potential to draw blood if you bump into it. Sure, it doesn’t sound like fun, but you’d have so many scars, and scars make for great stories. Your party conversations would sound like, “This scar I got when running to answer the phone and I came too close to the corner of my kitchen table. It was my mother calling.”

If sandpaper had never been invented, our beaches would be a lot bigger. There would be thousands more children enjoying the act of building a sandcastle, then crying as an unobservant beachgoer steps on it. But that’s life, and kids need to learn hard lessons.

I wonder if what appear to be rising sea levels are simply the depletion of our beaches. Some scientists should look into that. Next time I see a guy taking sand from the beach I’m going to corner him and find out what he’s doing with it. If he’s selling it to a sandpaper producer I’m going to smack it out of his bucket and tell him the world doesn’t need round corners anymore. Then I’ll apologize if his bucket gets damaged.

Probably the absolute worst thing about sandpaper is how easy it is to mistake it for cinnamon graham crackers. They look similar enough but taste quite different.

BEST FEATURE: The sound of sandpaper being used sounds like the ocean if you don’t listen too carefully.
WORST FEATURE: When you accidentally eat some instead of cinnamon graham crackers, your appetite is ruined and you don’t even want any crackers any more.

Please join me next week when I’ll be reviewing Spock.