09 July, 2009

The Little Things

Today I learned what a 'cootie-catcher' is. Mind you, I'd known what it was since a young age (ah, the memories of public school...) but had never known the actual name for it. For the unenlightened, a 'cootie-catcher' is a piece of paper, folded up into a shape that resembles a very blocky flower. It has a bunch of things written on various parts of it, such as your favourite colour, who you're going to marry.... and to be honest, I've forgotten the rest.

Cootie-catcher.
Quite a suggestive (in a pre-school kind of way) name for such an innocent contraption. Learning the name of the little thing changed my perception of it quite remarkably. When I was a child, I thought of it as just some thing that a lot of yucky girls on the playground were trying to get me to do.

Now, it's a ritual for pre-adolescent bonding (not to be confused with pre-adolescent bondage. I'm fairly certain that's illegal in most jurisdictions- although, Kentucky might be an exception).

This brings me to today's point: the little things matter. There's a catchphrase that some associates of mine are rather fond of- 'the devil is in the details.' In other words, if you don't pay attention to the minute details of something, they will come back and sink their pointy little teeth into your exposed, bare buttocks.

While driving up to campus today for my second class (some much-needed sleep prevented me from attending the preceding one), I became stuck behind a slow-moving Porsche Boxster (I know, I just love to pick on the Boxster...). Running a little late, as I tend to do, I was slightly anxious and increasingly angry with the man who had chosen to drive his expensive sportscar at a velocity of 40 km/h. Being mere feet away from his rear bumper, I had the time to take in the supple lines of the vehicle's body styling (I think there was a redesign this year- the back end wasn't nearly as ugly as it used to be. Insert cliché ex-wife joke here).

Then I noticed the license plate.

It was a regular old, seven-digit Ontario license plate. Like millions of other ones in circulation. That's not what caught my attention. What caught my attention was what was surrounding the license plate.

'PFAFF Porsche 101 Auto Park Circle Woodbridge ON L4L 8R1 905-851-0852'

Dear reader, if you have the means to purchase an automobile that costs more than the average person's yearly income, now or in the future... do me a favour and spend five dollars on a license plate frame that doesn't have the dealer's branding stamped all over it. You can get them at Canadian Tire. It's a little tacky for someone's personal possesions to advertise another's products or business in a blatant fashion.

It's VERY tacky when you've paid $70,000 to be able to do it.