The Ultimate Toe Cover

       Toe Covers – that’s the name Betty MacDonald gave to the useless items she was encouraged to make in the Craft Therapy room at her tuberculosis sanitarium -- and by the way, if you enjoyed The Egg and I, do try her memoir – The Plague and I.
      Years ago neighbor Dottie and I used to compete to see how many items we would not order from the mail-order catalogs.  I remember her pointing to a illustration of paper bags that could be ordered with your child’s name on them – “Why not just crayon the kid’s name on his lunch bag?”  (I’m not sure we had felt markers in those days.)  Too bad Dottie’s not around to enjoy what I ran across today in one of those aimed-at-the-old-folks catalogs.  A definite contender for Most Useless, it says:

PROTECT YOUR PARKING PERMIT

Keep your valuable handicap or disabled parking permit safe from rips and tears.  Just slip it into this sturdy plastic sleeve with built-in hanger.  2 for $6.98.

     I looked up some other vendors that offer this unnecessary affair on the Internet.  One boasts that it keeps the permit clean and neat.  Another points out that the permit will hang in clear sight (as opposed to?) Some of the ad copy plays on old folks’ worries.  Keeps your permit from getting lost (how does that work?) so you won’t have to spend time and money on a replacement.
     Another promises to protect from cracks, tears and creases.  These handicap permits, my friends, are made of indestructible heavy plastic.  I doubt if they’d yield to anything short of a chain saw. That sturdy plastic sleeve, on the other hand, could probably be cut with my desk scissors.  It makes the permit hang a couple of inches lower, blocking the windshield even further for those of my cohorts who leave them dangling while driving.
             Which is, by the way, against the law.