Fear of Straight Pins, Pandemic Version
I was minding my own business at home today, piddling around on a Sunday, when my wife, Lisa, approached me with a look on her face that I knew meant she needed me to do something. This doesn’t happen often, so I couldn’t complain.
She wanted me to model a face mask she had made to keep me safe from Covid-19. She wanted to improve the fit. Fine. But here’s the thing. Clipped to her wrist was a pin cushion, the kind my mother used to wear on her arm when she was fitting clothes she was making for my sister and me when we were kids.
In the 1970s, my mother made for me a three-piece suit with a jacket lining so professionally inserted you couldn’t tell it from a department store brand. She could perform the kind of magic with a Singer sewing machine that Herbie Hancock was making with the Fender-Rhodes electric piano. When she got on her knees to hem a pair of pants you were wearing, you’d better stand still or she would pull one of those pins and poke you with it. She gave no warning; her knees hurt, she clenched several pins in her teeth and she needed to work quickly. If you heard a mean grunt, it was too late; you had moved and you might be in for it.
Fast forward to this afternoon. I wore my mask as Lisa pinned darts in it; I waited for the pin stick, which never came, but it could have; I didn’t know. When she finished, I was glad to get away.
Guy D. Johnson is a writer and marketing communications professional. Previously an animation studio owner, daily newspaper editor, reporter and photographer, volunteer fireman, railroad bridge gang helper, FM radio station underling and cave guide. He has lived on farmland trusted to the sun and rain; atop a wooded hill; beside great rivers; upon an arid, high plateau; and at the subtropical coast of the Gulf of Mexico. For 20 years, he worked and wrote in New Orleans.