Re : Blowdryer (from Issue #9)
From : Beruang
Something is amiss with the math. If the blowdryer in question is indeed 17 years old, then it would have been purchased around 1985 -- a long way from the '70s and Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Could the Promax be even older than the story indicates?
From Mark Hastings
In 1979 shortly after I was discharged fromt the Navy, I bought a new GE hairdryer at a Pay N Save store in the Seattle area. Last year, my trustee GE finally gave up the ghost. It went into its death throws one morning by blowing a bunch of flaming heating element at my head then nothing but cold air. For the $20 I spent on it, I received well over 20 years of faithful service. The ironic part is, GE no longer makes hair dryers (sold small appliances to Black and Decker) and Pay n Save went out of business years ago. I miss my old hairdryer.
From Scarlett
I was just wondering ... I too have noticed how long old hairdryers can last, but during the 70s most of them had wattages far lower than they do now. I tried my old 'supermax', but with its 1250 watts, it just didn't do it for me, compared to the 1875 model I now have. As much as I am impressed with its longevity, how can it still possibly do the job, compared to the power that today's models have? Do you have very short hair?
Ellen Cherry replies
Blow me!
Oh, how satisfying to have my own teeming three! The longevity of my blowdryer has long fascinated me, and it's rather gratifying to see that it has captured the imagination of the loyal readership of Teemings as well.
Hrrrumpf, well anyway, the readers who felt moved enough to respond to my piece raise several interesting points, which provide me with the delightful opportunity to continue my blowdrying narrative, and also to come clean with a confession.
As Beruang points out, there is indeed something a little off in the math. My lil Promax Compact certainly was born in the 1970s when Farrah tresses were all the rage. I was indeed 14 when it became my own ... every word I wrote is true. It's just that they were written long enough ago to grow a few whiskers themselves. The column had never seen the light of publication, but I wrote it 7 or 8 years ago in response to a reader contribution column in the Louisville Courier-Journal called The Best of Everything. Readers are exhorted to extol the virtues of a product, the only requirement being that it be, in fact, something other readers can buy. Unfortunately, Gillette had ceased making the Promax by then and, effuse though I might, my piece didn't qualify under the strict Best of Everything standards. Thus, it languished, unpublished, in the bowels of my computer until Teemings seemed to cry for its resurrection.
Scarlett offers speculation about blowdryer lifespan as related to wattage -- something I also pondered on those many, many mornings as I heat-sealed my coif. She dismisses the 1250 wattage of her old model as too low -- well, hark ye to these tidings! The Promax's maximum wattage was a mere 1000, which I regularly lowered to 750! Yes, throughout its life, it was being used at medium capacity and it is this fact above all else that I attribute to its incredibly long life. I didn't need all that blow, baby -- it was hot, hot, hot. And, to answer your question, though my hair at present is quite short indeed, during the many years I used that blowdryer, I went from ultrashort punk to Big Hair and back again, all at 750 watts.
Which leads me to Mark Hastings's touching remembrances of his GE model, now vanished from his life after 20 years of unfailing, hot-breathed service. I, too, am now bereft of my Promax, felled not long ago by a cracked casing on its cord. Oh, the dryer would still perform nicely, but intermittently as flow of juice was interrupted. This was an electrical disaster in the making and sadly, the dear little appliance was retired until a time when nostalgia might force me to bind up its little wound with electrician's tape. Perhaps it shall rest in retirement on a back bathroom-closet shelf for all time. I cannot bear to throw it away. But, at the time of its removal of duty, it had blown me for an incredible total of 23 years. Yes, in my own little private Y2K disaster, the year 2000 rang in this sorrowful demise. And yet! as the careful reader will remember, there indeed was waiting in the wings, the (as it turned out) evil replacement unit brought to the marital toilet by my husband in 1986.
This foul-breathed minion of the devil himself had languished, unused since that time -- undoubtedly, seething in resentment. How did this excrement-hued, electrified spawn of hell lull me into believing it would serve as faithfully as its predecessor? Innocent girl! For, one morning as I wrestled with round-brush and wet hair, the vile thing exploded in my hand. The flaming shock I received in my left palm left a burning wound as woeful and visible as any saint's stigmata. It had its revenge, oh yes.
Patience with appliances, I have much. The tales I could tell of the General Electric Brewstarter coffeemaker, which gurgled well into its 20th year ... the makeup mirror which illuminated my cosmetics-ready visage through adolescence, college and for years thereafter -- and my mother's, before me. Clock radio purchased in 1984? In the prime of its life. Wedding-gift iron? You'd be impressed. Early-80s microwave? Still nukin' in the new millennium.
The age of planned obsolescence has met its match.