The reference to cleavage in the title of this essay is mainly a snare and a delusion. The cleavage reference was used as a titillating device to persuade the reader to wrestle with the rest of the essay. I offer no apologies for the misleading title in that the cleavage reference and the titillation will be explained to all readers presently.
At heart, this essay is a tribute to safety pins and their contribution to worldwide society. I suspect that safety pins have been with us for perhaps the last 200 years, but no one has made an appropriate tribute to their utility and beauty.
I am assuming that everyone knows how the safety pin is contoured and the use for which it is intended. It is the pin with a clasp on one end with a metal rod which has a coil in it being attached to the clasp. The coil serves as a spring and is intended to hold the pin tightly closed when the rod is returned to the clasp. Safety pins come in all sizes and for perhaps hundreds of years have been securing garments and other objects of affection. When such a pin is used to secure a female undergarment, the size is demure and will occupy less than a half inch of space. Those of us with bigger needs and failing eyesight require larger pins in the two and a half to three inch variety.
Those of us with 100,000 miles on the odometer may recall that our first garment after delivery from the womb was a diaper, which was secured on each side by a safety pin. In those days there was no such thing as diaper service. Whenever there was a diaper to be changed, it was a matter of unhooking the clasps on the safety pins, cleaning up the baby’s bottom, and then installing a new diaper, using the same safety pins that had secured the first diaper. Women seemed to have a knack for using safety pins. In the diaper changing operation, I have seen women holding the safety pins in their teeth and continuing their conversations without interruption. I never achieved this level of expertise because I was concerned about sticking the pin in the baby or, alternatively, in my hand. I have never cut and run when there was a diaper to be changed, but the fact is that my level of expertise never approached that of a graduate student.
When I no longer needed diapers, in the 1920s, boys in those days wore knickers. The fly on the knickers was equipped with perhaps four buttons followed by a larger button at the top which held the pants together at the waistband. When the large button came loose, as it often did because of excessive wear at the waist band, the only saving grace was a safety pin which held the pants in place until someone replaced the button. It was during this period that bullies on the playground would sometimes make a vigorous pass at another boy’s fly and tear the buttons loose. On those occasions, the teachers often came to the rescue by having a supply of safety pins in their desks. The teachers who were always females would remind the boys that in repairing the damage to their flies, they should retire to the boys’ room and not perform that operation in full view of the classroom.
My recollection is that zippers on the flies of men’s trousers did not come into full use until sometime after 1945 and the end of World War II. I remember vividly asking my parents to send me a spool of Coats’s Number 9 thread with some buttons and safety pins. At this point of course, I am speaking about military uniforms. When a button came loose on a military uniform or work pants, which were called fatigues, the repair was more or less up to the individual soldier. All during my 28 months overseas, I carried my Coats’s Number 9 thread and some buttons as well as a goodly supply of safety pins. Other soldiers came to know that my supply of buttons, thread, and safety pins was available to soldiers who showed the proper attitude. There were some bases that had laundries. My recollection is that those laundries were not given to gentle care of fabrics and that it was not unusual for garments to be returned with missing buttons. Nearly every soldier had a small sewing kit with a needle, or several needles, a little bit of thread, a few buttons, and a small supply of safety pins. Because most soldiers did not want to take the time, or perhaps lacked the expertise, to sew on buttons, they used the safety pins instead of replacing the buttons. It is obvious that safety pins have played an important part in my long life, and in the successful outcome of the Second World War. In this little essay it is my intention to salute safety pins.
One other item having to do with baseball comes to mind. As a child growing up during the Depression and then as a soldier, where baseball equipment was hard to come by, it was necessary to get maximum use out of every ball, glove, and bat. On one base in Africa, I can remember that when a baseball game was to be played, it was necessary to go to the quartermaster and take the equipment from a chest, which he guarded like a mother hen looking over her chicks.
In those cases, the men in the field got double use out of their gloves because both teams used the same gloves. For example, when a shortstop or a second baseman changed sides, he would leave his glove on the field so that it could be used by the opposing team. Those of us who had come of age during the Depression accepted this as a matter of course. There was a single button that held the glove on the hand. When a button was torn from an infielder’s glove, we also found that safety pins in large sizes would work reasonably well. So you see that safety pins had civilian as well as military uses.
Now I arrive at the point where, as I told you in the beginning, this essay has a degree of snare and delusion attached to it. I came into this world with safety pins adorning my first garment. The other night, in my 87th year, it became cold and I went to the closet to retrieve a heavier nightshirt. That particular nightshirt has the first button several inches below the collar, which exposes my throat and, worst of all, it discloses my cleavage. In fact, my cleavage is nothing to brag about except for the scars where my chest was opened on two occasions to permit surgeons to do their work replacing the aortic valve and giving me a heart bypass operation. But as life passes me by in these late innings, it turned out that a safety pin was exactly what the doctor prescribed. A two-inch safety pin in my expert hands fastened the nightshirt closed at the throat, which provided me with great comfort and protected by innate modesty.
So you see that when I entered this life and this evil world, safety pins had much to do with my well being. Now as my life draws to a close, safety pins are providing the same comforting assurances. Before I take my leave of this life, it seemed to me that paying a tribute to the utility and beauty of safety pins had to be in order. For those of you who were misled by the reference to cleavage in the title, I offer my conditional apologies for the seductive use of the English language. On the other hand, those of you who believed that this essay had salacious content, I offer my congratulations.
E. E. CARR
December 16, 2008
Essay 354
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Kevin’s commentary: You know, I was trying to fashion a makeshift curtain the other day by fastening two smaller curtains together. Unfortunately I had no safety pins at the time and was forced to give up the effort. I don’t see them so much anymore, and they certainly aren’t available in my bedroom drawers. I’ll have to keep some in stock going forward.
Curious readers can find more thoughts on buttons and zippers here and here respectively. Perhaps I’ll introduce a section in praise of (relatively) modern everyday objects.