Fish and Chips--The Andy Rooney Affair

Guest Blog from brother, Ted.

This is a section of Ted’s column for January 9, 1982.

As Ted says, “The story about Rooney’s letter is that I did this ‘pet peeve’ column just a week or so before Rooney did the same thing on his 60 Minutes segment.”

See Andy’s letter on a separate blog.

 Ted’s column reads:

“In the pet peeve department, we have found a new gripe. We used to become really agitated when forced to purchase four flashlight batteries when we only needed three. You see, batteries come in packages of two or four, but I only needed three. Now, you tell me what happens to that fourth battery when the next time comes to refill our three-cell flashlight. We’ve never been able to find it.

Now comes a new wrinkle. We went shopping for new shoelaces the other day. But, wouldn’t you know, they only come in double packages. In other words, in order to get one pair of laces you have to purchase two pair. Now is that fair? The boots we needed laces for are two years old. It would seem that new laces would last another two years. By that time, the boots would surely be worn out. The question is, of course, what do you do with the extra pair of laces?

To tell the truth, we got so agitated we refused to buy any laces. Tied knot in the old broken ones and continued on our way.


There ought to be a law.

While we’re at it, we ought to say something about those guarantees we receive.

Especially like the ones on the sock…”Unconditionally guaranteed.” Wonder what the heck that means? And then there’s the “Guaranteed to stay up.” What we can’t figure out is how does someone keep track of the sock with the stay-up guarantee after you discard the sticky label. And how do you prove to the store they won’t stay up and that you even bought them there in the first place?

Think about it.

Ted Sylvester is chief of the NE Rockland Bureau.