Friday, October 30, 2020

Double Take


After unpacking my new Honeywell Cool Mist Humidifier I carefully read the instruction pamphlet until coming, on page 2, to this sentence: “Helen of Troy will not accept responsibility for property damage caused by water spillage”.

I blinked and stopped reading. At first I feared, as the elderly do, that my hour had struck: I could no longer read, words were garbled, my eyes and brain were no longer in sync.

Then, noting that the rest of the page still made sense, I wondered for a moment if Priam, Menelaus, or Achilles would be more accepting of blame.

Finally, turning to the back of the pamphlet, I discovered this: “Kaz USA, Inc., a Helen of Troy Company.”  Consulting the repository of all knowledge, Wikipedia, I found that there is a gigantic international combine called, yes, “Helen of Troy”.

My only remaining questions were, what is Kaz USA and what happened to Honeywell? But, acknowledging at my age that there are mysteries we shall never know, and perhaps are not meant to know, I stifled my curiosity and filled the humidifier tank. It works fine. 

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