Never count your scissors

I want to shake the hand of the person who only has one pair of scissors in their house. That’s a person who believes that four of anything other than tires on your car is unhealthy. That’s a person who figured out that if you can’t juggle three scissors at the same time, you best stick with one and invest the money you save on bandaids in buying useful stuff like three-ring hole punches and stapler guns.

I, on the other hand, went looking for a pair of scissors the other day and found 23 of them. And that was just in our “office supply” drawer in the kitchen. There’s no telling how many others are lost between the couch cushions or in the glovebox. Wait a minute. I just found two more lurking on the countertop. Kitchen shears. That makes 25, ain’t no lie.

I blame it all on Robert Hinchliffe, who lived in Sheffield, England, way back in 1761. He didn’t invent the scissors, but he is the person credited for mass producing them. Of course, that made them less expensive to buy. Which is probably why — are you kidding me? — I’m up to 31 pairs.

(I just finished brushing my teeth. I counted six more pairs of scissors in the bathroom, sitting there in plain sight, daring me to count them. I pretended I hadn’t. They looked really sharp.)

The origin of scissors can be traced back to the very beginnings of arts and crafts. At least to 4,000 BC in Mesopotamia. The Middle East. The “Cradle of Civilization.” They didn’t look like modern-day scissors, but they were just as useful. The ancient Egyptians had them. So did the Romans and Chinese. And then along came Hinchliffe and disposable income. Thanks, Bob.

You know how when you’re interested in a subject, like the history of scissors, and you start doing a bit of research and come across essays available on the Internet written by folk who appear to be trying to pass a Rock-Paper-Scissors 101 class? Well, I found one and this is the sentence that really stabbed me in the pinky: 

“Nowadays, I’m sure at least one pair of scissors can be found in every home across the country.”

Just one? Really? Was this essay written in 1807? Okay, it said AT LEAST one. But how many homes across the country can boast of a few more than just one? That’s what I wondered. And since I didn’t know, I asked.

According to a recent survey I conducted with my FaceBook friends (a survey which probably made me look like a total lunatic to the 77 people who kindly responded), I learned that the average household can proudly claim to have 7.7 pairs of scissors in it, plus or minus two pairs. If we round that number up to eight, that seems like a good number of scissors to own. Eight. Not 42 of them.

That’s right. When my wife came home and joined the search party, she found 11 more scissors scattered all willy-nilly throughout the house, upping our Grand Total to 42. Six per room, including bathrooms. And to be honest, she had so much fun in tracking down the little buggers, I didn’t have the heart to be embarrassed by it all.

According to Dr. Regina Lark, a board-certified professional organizer, the average American household has 300,000 items in it. And if that’s true, then our scissor horde only takes up 0.014 percent of our total accumulated 40-years-of-marriage household collection. A mere blip compared to our coffee mugs and non-working flashlight mounds. So I apologize. I shouldn’t have gotten so snippy about the scissors.