Buckling under Mass Quantities

I’ve used up my crimson china marker and I’m not sure what to do. For those of you too young or too sheltered to know what a china marker is, let me explain. It is sometimes referred to as a grease pencil, and, indeed, it looks like a pencil, but instead of lead it has a core somewhat like a crayon, only better. Instead of being made of wood, it’s made of a tightly wound strip of paper. Instead of sharpening it in a pencil sharpener, you tug at the little string that loosens the next quarter inch of paper and rip it off, thereby exposing the next quarter inch of crayon. It is commonly used in stores to scribble prices on the back of china, glass items, or other slippery surfaces where most felt markers won’t work.

I’ve used china markers all my life for various little projects, generally wearing one out every five or six years, and therein lies my problem. My current one is worn out, so I reached for our handy office supply catalog, only to discover china markers are available only in boxes of one dozen. Now, if I were to buy a dozen, given the rate at which I use them up, not to mention my declining ability to even hold a pencil, I would have to live to the age of 154 to use up my supply. The likelihood of that happening is slim, even though I take a multivitamin tablet almost every day.

Today, everything is prepackaged; it is basically impossible to buy only what you want or need.

Did I mention that the box of 12 markers costs only $10.20? So it’s not the price that is the problem. It’s the idea of being trapped into buying items I know I’ll never use. And the same situation exists almost everywhere else. I needed a bolt 9/32 of an inch to replace one that broke on the footrest of my barber chair. (Please, don’t ask me to explain why I own a barber chair.) At the hardware store, I had my choice: I could buy a sealed package of 25 9/32-inch bolts, or I could buy a box of 100 bolts in assorted sizes. I could not buy one bolt, even though my hundred-year-old barber chair has never needed a new bolt before, and probably never will again.

In the old days, I could walk into Thomas and Grayston or Farnham’s stationery supply stores and buy one china marker pencil. Or into any hardware store and buy one bolt out of a bin. But no longer. Today, everything is prepackaged; it is basically impossible to buy only what you want or need; and our feeling that we’re being taken advantage of—and our subsequent increasing irritability—grows stronger.

You want heated seats in your new car? Well, you can’t have them unless you buy the personal comfort package, which also includes tinted windows, whole-car air cleaner, and reclining rear seats. Package price: $2,400. You want a white T-shirt? They come in packages of three. You want the Discovery Channel? It comes bundled with 47 other channels you’ll never watch. You want an ear of corn? It’s in a little cardboard tray with three other ears of corn, tightly wrapped in plastic.