WHEN THE SPUDS A DUD

Brought home a bag of potatoes this week. Washed potatoes, $6.99 for ten kilos. 

A great price, right? A damn good buy. I don’t get a whole lot of those, because let’s be honest, I’m male and I just want to be in and out of the supermarket as soon as humanly – manly? – possible. I really have no idea what I’m doing. 

 But then my brain says maybe, just maybe, these potatoes are not such a good deal. Maybe there’s a reason they’re so cheap, that there’s a reason they are not in transparent plastic, but hidden away in one of those big heavy paper bags. 

You really can’t see what you’re getting until you’ve already paid for them. And now they’re yours, and you’re taking them home. 

This brings to mind that bad date, back … then. From the beginning, you were just not sure about things, right? It was all mystery and maybes. What is under there? you asked yourself. What have I missed?

But the time of the, um, unveiling, then it’s too late. And like that date, you’ve got your hands on them now, and you bring them out into the light… 

Holy shit, these are some ugly potatoes.   

I gotta tell you, these are Igor potatoes. Even washed, they’ve got lumps in weird places, on the back, on the side. Lumps and bumps.  There’s clumps of lumps on the bumps on these potatoes. 

And they’ve got weird dark areas that look, let’s be honest, like some kind of disease. 

 I mean, maybe those dark little spots are just under the skin, but maybe it goes right through the whole potato. Remember, beauty is skin deep, but ugly goes right to the core.

 I think we’re going to have cut deep here, Doctor Frankenstein. Hand me the scalpel.

Even the okay ones, they’ve got that slightly green tinge, like something that’s been long buried and now brought up from under the ground. There’s a whole horror movie thing going on here. It Came From Under Ground!

Even the good looking potatoes are starting to look pretty strange. They’re got little crevices between oddly symmetrical halves. It’s a bum. Now we’ve got bumps, clumps, lumps, rumps. 

In fact, it’s got protuberances, swellings, bulges, protrusions, knobby bits. This potato looks like it was designed by one of those modern artists for whom two breasts and two buttocks and two knees wasn’t enough. 

And this one I’m holding now, it’s short and rounded and scrubbed bare. Pale, unhealthy colour. Pretty much as wide as it is tall…

Holy hell! It’s my mother in law, that time I inadvertently walked in on her in the bath.

Remember that? It was a moment, an image burned into the psyche, something that’s gonna stick with you like chewing gum to the cat.

I tell you this, people, because this is why we cut potatoes into really small pieces and toss them into boiling water, a hot pre-heated oven or really, really hot fat.

We need to burn that memory – those arses and naked flesh and dark little crevices and diseases and mothers in law – right out of our heads.

Boil it, fry it, sear it, mash it! Doesn’t matter... just do it! Scorch it. Nuke it into oblivion.

Oh, and next time, buy your potatoes in see-thru bags… 

p.s. Sorry about that mental picture I’ve left you with.

 That was it.    

The key now comes with a fob that’s the electronic boss, complete with its own chips and codes, even its own energy source.

Indeed, Captain Fob is the centre of an entire automotive universe, in command of something called the RF Transponder, and with that, everything from the car engine to lights and locks.

This brave new world is a radically different place from that which faced a young Kerr starting out on Life’s Voyage sometime in a previous century.

Back then, a missing car key was a minor inconvenience, a delay of perhaps minutes. We had long learned how to get a vehicle in motion entirely without a key.

It was a practical demonstration of necessity being the mother of invention.

For instance, my mother’s car was a necessity. If her key wasn’t available to me or my brother at the time of our intended journey – hard to believe, I know – we invented with wire and pliers.

The pair of us took to hotwiring cars like a politician to perks. In fact, mum’s car was needed for the borrowing so often that we installed a private, permanent hotwire – with a switch built in ! – between battery and starter motor.

The wire worked fine until one afternoon fire ignited the engine bay, and car became carbeque. True story. It was my brother’s fault.

But back to the current dilemma. I am key-less. And in this new world, Captain Fob at the helm, I am mere mug mechanic. I can gain access to the engine compartment, maybe even find the starter motor.

But can I still affix a wire to its nethers? What’s the likelihood my simple action will carbonize some sensitive (that is to say, expensive) component of that computer-controlled apparatus at the front of the vehicle?

Let’s remember how much it cost to repair my last automotive ‘repair.’

And let’s remember that a replacement key and electronic fob will be $300-plus, which was more than the entire price of my first car.  And that key came free. 

Right now, I really do need the current keys for the car. Wife’s bag? Never, ever a good idea. Could be bears, witches, giants in there.

Then there’s the No-Man’s-Land that is her side of the bed, not to mention the Don’t-Go-There recesses of the couch, among the half-finished, part-eaten and once-loved.

It’s even possible the car keys have made it to the very edge of the Kerr domestic universe, the eighth Circle of Hell that is our laundry.

What I need – what we all need – is a device, a TV-remote type gizmo that finds car keys by sending a signal to the key’s electronic bits.

There’ll be a beep, a blip, a burp… something to tells me where the keys are. Surely, such a thing could be included in the next generation of mobile phones? Find the key-finder app on the screen, press the virtual button, and presto! 

Of course, before I can find my keys, first I’ll have to find my phone.