Change of Detergent

So I have this friend. He moved to a new home a few months back. He told me the other day that he received a change of address form from his bank. It came in the mail. To his new address. It had the new address on the envelope,

How did they know where to send it?

How am i supposed to do an entire article on something that silly yet so simple? Never mind. Change topics.

We ran out of dishwasher detergent a week or so back. So I go to the nearby "discount" store. Remember? The one that keeps their box fans in the women's undergarments section? Yeah, that's the place. I was looking through the options and pondering the "deals" and thinking that somehow spending a few more dimes for "the same" product might somehow mean less money for books, Disney trips, exploration of distant cemeteries, National Geographic magazines (I read them for the articles), Robert Toombs trading cards (I've never seen any before but you gotta be ready just in case you do stumble across something like that) or, of course, a 12-pound Napoleon field cannon for the front yard. So I got a bargain. A pack of the little pre-measured pouches that dissolve in water.

Those little pouches that are supposed to dissolve in water. The engineering marvel of our time, the magic packages made of cellulose or whatever that know the magic time to release their payload and overwhelm the forces of spaghetti sauce, coffee and bread crumbs leaving your dishes sparkling clean and spot-free. 

Those aren't the the pouches on special in the land of breezy lingerie. When you check the dishwasher and find the little pouch looking up from its designated bomb bay and seemingly laughing hysterically as you hope that the dry cycle didn't eternally bake the spaghetti sauce onto the wine glasses - because dishwasher collateral damage is a very real first-world problem.

So I'm looking back at the maniacal pouch while the terrible visions of toddlers in Southeast Asian sweatshops packing washing powders into those little ziplock baggies that cocaine dealers use and shrink wrapping them closed dance in my head. 

Poor kids. And I'm at fault for their misery all because I want a period-authentic artillery piece next to the holly bush when I could settle for a garden gnome like a normal person. Wait...do they make fair-trade garden gnomes?

And there is still spaghetti sauce on my coffee mugs.

Lesson learned. The sweatshop variety pouches are not that great of a bargain.

So your homework is to find fair-trade garden gnomes. I'm going to run the dishwasher again and see if I can figure out how that change of address form made it to my friend's mailbox. Well, that and track down some Robert Toombs trading cards.