I'd been fighting something for a week. The doctor agreed, and put me on some antibiotics which seemed to do the trick. But while the underlying germ was vanquished, some of the attendant symptoms were slower to depart. I was left with a cough that was unpleasant not only to me, but to those nearby. It caused me to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to hold it in, looking like I'm trying to impersonate jazz great Dizzy Gillespie. And I seem to have an ongoing snootful, making me wish I had purchased stock options in tissues.
There's a box by the bed, a box by my desk and one in the family room. They are within reach in the kitchen, in each bathroom and in my car. Before I walk out of the house I grab a "pocket pack" for my pocket and toss another into my backpack. In the beginning of the week I was a chain sneezer, with mere minutes going by between uses. Mercifully the tide has turned, and the intervals are lengthening. Still, spend that much time with a particular product, and it leads one to contemplate it in ways that I can only describe as mildly obsessive, or alternatively, with a Seinfeld-esque focus on nothing.
First, in the heat of the moment, brand doesn't matter. To be sure, Kimberly Clark's "Kleenex" brand owns the market with a nearly 50% share, and so statistically I used a lot of their products. But when you feel that itch in the back of your nose, and you start reaching around like a rat on crack for something to absorb the oncoming convulsion, a Puffs or a Scottie is just fine. In that same vein, color or pattern doesn't matter. White is traditional, but designer shades or styling are fine as well. If possession is nine tenths of the law, when a sneeze is imminent proximity to said tissue is ten tenths.
Only one thing makes a difference and it's not the tissue itself. Yes, some cheaper products are a bit rougher, but any port in a storm. Some try to distinguish themselves with a fresher scent, others with aloe to sooth your nose, still others with antibacterial chemicals to help prevent the spread of germs. You may like one variation or another; for me it matters not. What I have come to appreciate is the genius that is realized in a feature that was enshrined in one of the original patents, and rolled out to the public in 1928. It has been copied endlessly and improved upon, but never bettered: the center-slot pop-up box.
A Kleenex innovation, it was a system for folding subsequent sheets one upon one another in a manner so they when you take one, another pops up cleanly in its place. It has been adapted, and become the defacto-standard for not only tissues but napkins, paper towels and rolling papers. In terms of standards in their respective spaces, it ranks up there with shoelaces, forks or number 2 pencils.
I speak from experience. As noted we have numerous tissue boxes in various places around the house. Randomly it seems that some are the direct descendants of that center pop-up box, while others have a side cutaway revealing a stack of tissues. Reach for one from the pop-up box, and another takes its place immediately. Reach for one from the side saddle vehicle, and you're apt to leave a trail of paper behind. Or get three when one will do. Or not be able to get one quickly and individually. And so you grab a handful, slap them to your face and explode, and wind up throwing out a stack. You can almost feel a tree leprechaun die every time it happens.
Because patents expire after 20 years, Kleenex no longer has the exclusive hold on this innovation. And so you find the same delivery system in other brands, be they major label or discounted store. Which makes it even more puzzling why some choose not to take this approach. I suppose if your goal is to grab a stack to use for later, the side opening makes sense. But otherwise, for the use that they were intended, as a disposable alternative to handkerchiefs, the top center dispenser is the standard. Put another way, it is the iPhone of tissue world.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford is feeling better, thank you. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
There's a box by the bed, a box by my desk and one in the family room. They are within reach in the kitchen, in each bathroom and in my car. Before I walk out of the house I grab a "pocket pack" for my pocket and toss another into my backpack. In the beginning of the week I was a chain sneezer, with mere minutes going by between uses. Mercifully the tide has turned, and the intervals are lengthening. Still, spend that much time with a particular product, and it leads one to contemplate it in ways that I can only describe as mildly obsessive, or alternatively, with a Seinfeld-esque focus on nothing.
First, in the heat of the moment, brand doesn't matter. To be sure, Kimberly Clark's "Kleenex" brand owns the market with a nearly 50% share, and so statistically I used a lot of their products. But when you feel that itch in the back of your nose, and you start reaching around like a rat on crack for something to absorb the oncoming convulsion, a Puffs or a Scottie is just fine. In that same vein, color or pattern doesn't matter. White is traditional, but designer shades or styling are fine as well. If possession is nine tenths of the law, when a sneeze is imminent proximity to said tissue is ten tenths.
Only one thing makes a difference and it's not the tissue itself. Yes, some cheaper products are a bit rougher, but any port in a storm. Some try to distinguish themselves with a fresher scent, others with aloe to sooth your nose, still others with antibacterial chemicals to help prevent the spread of germs. You may like one variation or another; for me it matters not. What I have come to appreciate is the genius that is realized in a feature that was enshrined in one of the original patents, and rolled out to the public in 1928. It has been copied endlessly and improved upon, but never bettered: the center-slot pop-up box.
A Kleenex innovation, it was a system for folding subsequent sheets one upon one another in a manner so they when you take one, another pops up cleanly in its place. It has been adapted, and become the defacto-standard for not only tissues but napkins, paper towels and rolling papers. In terms of standards in their respective spaces, it ranks up there with shoelaces, forks or number 2 pencils.
I speak from experience. As noted we have numerous tissue boxes in various places around the house. Randomly it seems that some are the direct descendants of that center pop-up box, while others have a side cutaway revealing a stack of tissues. Reach for one from the pop-up box, and another takes its place immediately. Reach for one from the side saddle vehicle, and you're apt to leave a trail of paper behind. Or get three when one will do. Or not be able to get one quickly and individually. And so you grab a handful, slap them to your face and explode, and wind up throwing out a stack. You can almost feel a tree leprechaun die every time it happens.
Because patents expire after 20 years, Kleenex no longer has the exclusive hold on this innovation. And so you find the same delivery system in other brands, be they major label or discounted store. Which makes it even more puzzling why some choose not to take this approach. I suppose if your goal is to grab a stack to use for later, the side opening makes sense. But otherwise, for the use that they were intended, as a disposable alternative to handkerchiefs, the top center dispenser is the standard. Put another way, it is the iPhone of tissue world.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford is feeling better, thank you. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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