Sybil's "WONDERFUL WORLD of TOMORROW!"..... Wonder #112… The “Do-It-All Pal”…

Hello Friends! (...and I use that term loosely!) Did you know that scientists and engineers are working around the clock to improve YOUR lives in the future? Well, they ARE! And here’s a case in point… Professor Zellner Baffin of the Happy, Healthy & Hygienic Homemakers Institute has finally perfected his “Do-It-All Pal”…. A device that can walk, talk, cook, clean, and do every chore in the house!... even drive a car and help your children with their homework!! And tuck them in at night! Can you imagine? 

Trial testing was carried out in the most scientific and thorough methods and under the most extreme conditions too! Zellner’s Pal was able to serve an eight course meal for twenty guests including hors d'oeuvres and aperitifs, and two amuse-bouche palate cleansers, all with accompanying wines and champagnes…and in a subzero igloo. It was able to wash 84 windows inside and out of a speeding bullet-train traveling at 120 mph from Akron to Toledo… in just 17 minutes.

Everything about the new Pal was perfection, except for one thing. The Conservative Ladies Review Board for Higher Proclivity and Purpose withheld its approval rating for a couple of factors. After examining the device in their laboratories and interrogation rooms over a stressful weekend, they were unable to determine the gender of the machine. Its anatomical features baffled and vexed them. Was it male or female? Although large and fairly blocky, the presence of…(ahem)..nipples on the front threw many of the women into a fit. Was the Pal in fact a female, rolling around the American home, driving a car, weeding the garden on its hands and knees, (and perhaps even learning to smoke on its time off!) going to be a temptation to the husbands of America as a …”Sexual Plaything”? Even when Chairwoman Dolores Kanque pointed out to the board that men too have nipples, and that shouldn’t be the only criteria, their was still consternation at the fact that “the groin area made no definite statement about gender or reproductive capabilities, and by thus being vague, it may conjure misapprehensions among small children, inappropriate fantasies among pubescent persons, and unnecessary touching or exploring by adults and the whimsically elderly”. 

Professor Baffin was summoned before Kanque and the entire board to answer any and all charges. He quickly flattered the board on its perspicacity and tried to allay their fears. First of all, those were not nipples, but rather headlights to allow the Pal to vacuum late at night or to wax linoleum floors without running over the cat or the afore-mentioned whimsically elderly who are often milling about kitchens in the wee hours…often on hands and knees. Secondly, and here he demonstrated, the entire so-called “groin areas” of the machine were both the suction and exhaust ducts; the front was the source for the retractable hose which allowed for the all-powerful vacuuming and many convenient attachments. And the rear groin area was the exhaust which allowed, as the brochure claimed, “for m’lady to rest her freshly washed and set hair in the comfortable double cushion and have her coiffure dried in 10 breezy minutes”! Everyone agreed totally that both features were fundamental and considered by all to be the height of modern technology. Several of the ladies were embarrassed that they had even mentioned topics like nipples and groin areas, and apologized on the spot for any misunderstandings. Indeed, many of their fellow-board members later at the luncheon looked disapprovingly at them and said things like, “Really Millicent, you’d think you were raised as a Hootchy-Kootch in a Burlesque Palace”, or “My gracious, Gladys! I’m surprised you even THINK about nipples! Stop it at once. If not for your own sake then for your children’s…and any house pet’s!”. 

Zellner, who was asked at the last minute to be the honored and impromptu guest-speaker at the luncheon, was later sent on his way with the Pal and a 100% approval rating, the first ever given by The Conservative Ladies Review Board for Higher Proclivity and Purpose! Manufacture began almost immediately, and sales were brisk and nationwide!…. It wasn’t until the Murphreesboro Temple of the Knights of Jonah began making inquiries as to the race of the Pal that things got so complicated. Well, the race of the Pal, and whether that hook on the left wrist indicated that it was a war veteran… or a pirate…. And that’s when everything went so tragically downhill….. so very tragically…

[Want to read other fun and funny stories here on SybilSez.com? Just enter any topic that pops into your head in the "search" window on the upper right! Who knows what might come up?...and feel free to share them with your friends!]