I have learned a few lessons in life over the years. One of them is never get involved in a land war in Asia. Another is to never use White Out with Word. It’s a bitch to get off the computer screen.
You remember White Out, or more appropriately, Liquid Paper. It was invented by Bette Nesmith Graham, a secretary at a Texas bank. Like most overnight success stories, she invented Liquid Paper in 1951 (it was then known as Mistake Out). The company didn’t make enough money to hire even its first employee until 1968, 17 years after launching the product.
Even with the advent of Word and PCs, Liquid Paper is still being sold. And if the name Nesmith should ring a bell, her son, the heir of the Liquid Paper fortune, is Mike Nesmith of The Monkees.
For anyone in the typewriter era, especially those of us who had to crank out term papers, White Out was a godsend.
It was also something of a miracle. Why? Because you could make all the mistakes you wanted and they would magically go away with a few swipes of a brush.
If only we could have a version of White Out that worked in real life. Make a mistake and simply white it out with a few strokes of what would have to be a very large brush.
I know that I could have really used a bottle of White Out along the way. Of course, my friends would argue that I would need several bottles, perhaps even a case of bottles each the size of a municipal water tank.
In my younger days I certainly would have loved White Out. Bad marriage? A few strokes and voila! – I could cover it up and move on, none the worse for wear. Family rift? A little White Out and my brothers never existed, or if I did want them to exist, all the nonsense that befell us would be erased as soon as the White Out dried.
Unfortunately, they don’t make White Out for life’s mistakes. Instead, they are all there for you in all glorious 3D Technicolor. There’s no fast forward, no stop, but you can always rewind and enjoy the same mistakes over and over again if you want to.
While there is no White Out for life, there is Black Out. I’ve resorted to Black Out on many occasions. When things got so bad and there was no White Out to be had, a little Black Out would do the trick.
If you recall, with White Out you eventually had to add alcohol to it to thin it out a bit. Otherwise it would come out in pasty globs.
Black Out never has this problem. It already has all the alcohol you need already in it. And unlike White Out, which comes in some really odd pastel shades that never quite matched the colored paper it was intended for, any color of Black Out works just fine.
True, some colors are more effective than others. A couple dabs of of the right shade of brown and you can have a Black Out in no time at all. Amber, red and white take a bit longer but clear can be lightning fast.
IIn a perfect work I still think White Out would be far more useful. Even the best Black Out on the market is only temporary. Eventually, it wears off and all those pesky mistakes show up again, and sometimes they are even worse than they were originally. So you have no choice but to apply more Black Out.
Fortunately, this is relatively easy because Black Out, unlike White Out, does come in industrial sized bottle so you can reapply it easily and often without repeated trips to the store. This will keep your mistakes covered up for some time. Even big mistakes.
Ah, big mistakes. That’s what my mother called my marriages this past weekend. She said, and I quote, “Robb has had his share of big mistakes over the years. My other two sons are still married to their first and only wives.”
Well thanks for that mom. Did you ever stop to think that my brothers might just be using a lot of Black Out to stay in those marriages.
I willingly admit that I have resorted to bottles of Black Out on occasion. They have indeed taken me through the mistakes that a bottle of White Out, no matter how large, could have never covered up. Sure, it was only temporary, but at the moment, Black Out did the job.
As did my bottle of Gray Out. No, I don’t use it to color my hair. As I have painfully learned over the years, life isn’t black and white. It’s various shades of gray. This is where Gray Out comes in handy. I can let it blur the lines in my life between two extremes, especially in the area of right and wrong. Not sure if I should do something? Add generous coats of Gray Out until the choice I really want is the only one left. Black and white – gone. All that’s left are shades of gray.
So I can’t have White Out. Big deal. While it would be nice to be able to totally erase my mistakes, being able to use Gray Out and Black Out has worked wonders over the years. I can still see the mistakes clearly if I want to, or I can choose instead to reapply one of these two wonder products so that they are no longer there, or at least, no longer top of mind.
Maybe the miracles of modern science will give us White Out one day. Oh wait, nature already took care of that. It’s called Alzheimer’s. On second thought, I think I will just make do.
Out on the Treasure Coast, looking for my bottle of Black Out,
– Robb