Friday, November 26, 2010

The 21st Century Jigglebelt

Did I tell you the deep dark abominable secret I learned about my husband last weekend at the Whyalla Show?
            I shouldn't've been surprised - his unnatural enthusiasm for dragging me into the Home and Garden pavilions at the Toronto Ex ought to have given me a clue.  So should the way he bookmarks late-night highlight reels from the home shopping network on youtube.
            Mr Tabubil is mad about home maintenance product demonstrations.  He watches them all the way through, standing right up at the front of the crowd, where he grins and nods and laughs at every single half-hearted home-improvement joke - 
            and then - 
            He Buys The Products.
            Seven minutes after we hit the Home and Garden Hall at the Whyalla Show, he owned four blue shammy cloths.  He sighed worshipfully over the Home Workshop in a Closet, rubbed his hands together - in real glee! - over the Magical Sliding Workbench from Melbourne - and then he found a real live demonstration by a real live German Expert of Europe's Number One Window Cleaning Sponge and he was lost.
            And this is when the dark character of his mania became apparent:
            The product was actually very good -and he didn't buy it.
            We stopped to watch a patented Power Jigsaw  in action (drills through anything - concrete, steel, glass, corrugated iron), skated right by a spectacularly efficient and adaptable set of table clamps, only to come to a halt at the whirlpool spa display (the 20' long, 10' deep at the centre, seats 12 in royal comfort prestige model was truly worth a goggle).  We moved on again, past the Tasmanian Leather Sofa Suites (I bruised my bottom sitting down - they're concrete under that Antipodean cowhide) and finally came to a dead stop in front of the Temple to Jiggle Your Cares Away.  It was a magnificent sight - a dozen bronzed gods and goddesses stood on a dozen vibrating platforms, holding tightly to the sturdy guard rails as their avoirdupois literally melted away.             A young god stepped down from his machine and smiling tenderly, extended me a hand.  I took it, and rose to stand next to him upon the platform - and was vibrated into the middle of next week.  A howling rattling gale shook the veneers loose from my teeth and untied my shoelaces.  My inner ear went of vacation, leaving no forwarding address.  Dimly I heard the god shouting something about efficient firming of the abdominals - my abdominals were a bowl full of jelly and my 20-year-old appendix scar was coming unstitched.
            Risking life and limb, I released one hand and groped for the off switch.  As the machine shuddered to a halt, the horrible man informed me - in condescending tones - that fifteen minutes a day on this appalling apparatus would bring me more benefit than an hour of daily minutes of intensive muscle training.  He flexed a pectoral and waited for my admiration, but I my gaze was listing twenty degrees abeam, and without even a polite leer I sloped off after it, trailed by a vastly impressed Mr Tabubil.
            We made it almost all the way to the end of the pavilion before we hit the demonstration of The Only Broom You Will Ever Need (Buy One Get One Free)
            Guess how many we bought.

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