“Number Five—Alive!!” Or, Why You Can’t Keep A Good Shredder Down

My mother recently tried to pawn her old paper shredder off on me. This is because she bought herself a new, super-powered shredder that can shred tennis shoes and whole phone books. She is terribly concerned about keeping her private stuff private, preferably by shredded it into thousands of little paper confetti strands. I, on the other hand, don’t give a flying crap about that stuff, as 75% of my “private” documents fall into the “not classified” category. The other 25% fall into the “who gives a rat’s ass?” category.

Now, on the other hand, shredding shit is fun. I’ll give her that. And I suppose I ought to protect my dubiously important info more diligently. My friend Joe apparently shares my mom’s affinity for shredding. That man likes to shred. Upon opening a brand new, fresh pack of playing cards with which to play Asshole, he shreds the jokers. Just because he can. This certainly qualifies as 'unnecessary use of a shredding device,' but who am I to deny a man his jollies?

Point in case: after a half dozen beers last night we found ourselves pondering what to shred. We considered a slice of American cheese, but worried it might gum up the works. Then, in a flash of inspiration, Joe decided to see how the shredder could handle his “Asshole Accoutrement”—a caramel-colored mullet wig traditionally bequeathed on the Big Loser of our Asshole game.

Turns out, there IS something a shredder can’t handle—it gobbled that sucker up in no time flat, chewed it all the way down to the strange mullet-wig netting that holds the mullet wig together, emitted the low rumble of a dying shredder, and went kaput.

It reminded me strangely of the sad almost-conclusion to that perennial 1980s favorite “Short Circuit,” starring Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg, when Johnny Five, the robot with a heart of gold, finally succumbs to his oppressors , and “blink”--just like that--goes to the great robot castle in the sky.

And, much like the happy conclusion of “Short Circuit,” you’ll be relieved to know that after we picked mangled wads of synthetic mullet-hair out, we were able to miraculously resurrect the Lil Shredder that Could, just slightly worse for the wear. Proving, of course, that you can’t keep a good shredder down.

And while we're talking robots, here's a FREE trivia question for you faithful readers: what's the name of the girl robot from TVs' "Small Wonder"?

wickie, wickie,
--Viola