Guest Column: Totally hacked
I just read a time-saving, moneysaving hack: “Need a moisturizing treatment for your hair? Skip the salon and reach into your refrigerator!” Sounds simple enough, but time-saving, money-saving hacks don’t always turn out as advertised.
I’m a hack addict — a hackoholic, if you will — and the internet is hack heaven! Got a question? Need a solution? Is there a better way? Just ask Google, or Siri, or my own best friend and adviser, Alexa.
It wasn’t always this easy. In the old days we had two sources: our mothers and Reader’s Digest.
Most often our mothers’ comments would end with, “So, if your friends are jumping off a bridge, you’re gonna do it, too?” That’s probably why we ignored our moms and turned to the how-to articles that popped up in the Digest, such as: Five-ways to remove blood splatter off a wall; how to convert that bridesmaid dress into cafe curtains: or 50 ways to leave your lover (not only pre-internet, but pre-Simon & Garfunkel).
Because I’ve collected hacks, even before they were called that, I’ve had my share of wins and fails. Mostly fails.
I should have known that the tip to “save that broken nail with superglue” might include complications because of an incident years earlier that involved my husband. We were going to the Navy Ball. Life was fancy for us in those days. He in his dress uniform and me in a long gown, big hair, plus a tiara.
As we were leaving the house his front tooth, a cap, fell out showing a big gap when he smiled, and a metal post. He grabbed the superglue and filled the hollow in the tooth, then jammed it into place. But when he tried to remove his thumb and finger, they were glued to his tooth and, worse, so was his tongue.
Long story short, he pried his fingers free and left a big patch of tongue skin on the back of that tooth. We were late for the ball, but that was my fault. I had laughed so hard I had to change clothes. Fortunately, in those fancy days, I had a closet full of long gowns. And tiaras. I still laugh when I think about it. Not him, though.
My own superglue “event” happened on the ferry to Greenport. I figured fixing the broken fingernail would be easy-peasy. I used my right hand to apply the glue to thebroken nail on my left hand, which rested on the center of my steering wheel. By the time the ferry docked, the glue had dried and my left hand was superattached to the steering wheel. I was all the way to Mattituck before I’d pulled my hand free. There was some blood, but my broken nail looked wonderful, so I put that hack on my win side. Lord knows where that car is now, but wherever, a clump of my DNA is still firmly attached. The instant face-lift hack was a fail. “Don’t bother with expensive serums or plastic surgery. Whip up a raw egg white until frothy, then apply to your face and let dry. Wrinkles, crows feet, frown lines — all gone!”
Just as my DIY facelift was dry my husband came into the kitchen and I asked, “How do I look?” through clenched teeth because my skin was stretched so taut I couldn’t really move my mouth and I didn’t want to ruin the “lift.”
“Like a glazed donut,” he said. “What!” I said, feeling my instant lift crack and crinkle in a dozen places, so I looked like a smashed glazed donut. And adding insult to injury, I smelled like the worst part of a two-day-old lemon meringue pie.
Perhaps my worst fail (to date) was the chicken cutlet hack. I saw it on “Oprah.”
“Don’t waste two minutes pounding those cutlets thin,” Oprah’s chicken-hack guru advised. “Just place the cutlet in a plastic bag, then place the bag under your car’s tire and run it over. Voila! Instant flattened cutlets.”
My chicken did not flatten, it vanished. The bag was still there, but the chicken was gone! Apparently, the guru drives a lighter car than mine because $6 worth of chicken breasts had shot out of the bag and slammed themselves against the side of my house. Worse, they weren’t just hanging there. My house has cedar shingles and the shredded chicken hit with such force, it was embedded in those shingles. I tried getting it out with tweezers, but most of it stayed there. Not a big deal until the sun hits that side of the house.
I should know better now, right? I guess I’m just a slow learner. That being said, “Alexa! How many washings does it take to get mayonnaise out of someone’s hair? Asking for a friend.”
Joanne Sherman is a resident of Shelter Island and longtime Times Review columnist.
