Oh, For Cryin' Out Loud

There are a couple commercials that irritate me to the point of - well - writing about them.

“There’s nothing worse than standing in line to buy stamps,” the man says in one of the commercials. After he makes this rather melodramatic statement, a series of people offer up similar words expressing the horrors of leaving one's home to buy stamps. In less than a millisecond I can think of a litany of far worse things than standing in line to buy stamps; having no money to even buy stamps being the first; standing in a pediatric oncology clinic being the second. I think most of us can scribble off a pretty extensive list of things that are worse. In fact, if a tedious wait in line at the post office was to be the worse thing I experienced in my life - I'd be one very fortunate lady.

The other commercial that irks me is one in which a young woman isn’t sure if she should accept a friend’s invitation to Las Vegas as her teeth are a couple shades too dark. For all intents and purposes I couldn’t even tell her teeth were in need of whitening but apparently they were so discolored she just might have to stay home. If this doesn’t instill in women an unhealthy dose of insecurity, I can’t imagine what does. She is saved, thank God, by owning some quick whitening strips. And then in another commercial, along the same vein, security guards can’t even recognize a woman in her passport picture, due to her now whitened teeth. Forget about her entire head and face - her brighter smile have the guards baffled.

I’m not the curmudgeon it may seem. But these commercials do make me a bit surly. I think they would do better if they tried to appeal to real people living real lives. I know of no one that would forgo a trip due to the shade of their teeth. No one.

And I’m not down on commercials, in fact some commercials are more enjoyable than the show I’m watching, or they’ll have a catchy tune that I'll remember long after having forgotten my own birthday, “Sometimes you feel like a nut...sometimes you don’t...Almond Joy’s got nuts...Mound’s don’t.”

As we all head off into the weekend, let me just say that I hope the worse calamity to befall you is a trip to the post office. And if, by chance, you are invited anywhere - go, be happy - regardless of your teeth being two shades less than brilliant white.

Sane