by Laurel Schroeder
My blender is broken. I blent too vigorously. Which is a bummer since replacement parts are clearly a thing of the past. If I wanted to just replace the whole blender, no problem. I could just pop down to the local Walmart and get a nice shiny new one for about 30 bucks. But see, the thing is, my whole blender isn’t broken – I mean the whole thing didn’t just spontaneously shatter into a hundred pieces. The base broke and the blade won’t turn. If I had a new base, the whole thing would work just as well as it did the first day I got it.
So what happens when I try to track down a replacement for this part? People’s reactions range from sympathy to disbelief to open hostility. “You just don’t do something like that! Not when you can buy a shiny new one at Walmart for 30 bucks!” And what do I do when that one breaks too? “Buy another one! They come in different colors!”
We buy badly made things because they’re cheap, and then they break because they’re badly made. Then we replace them with even cheaper things, which break too.
My parents got a blender as a wedding gift, and it still makes killer margaritas. They had their 37th anniversary last year. I’m just sayin…