Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for June 01, 2017

At least he didn’t send you out for six feet of fellopian tubing and two yards of flight line.

I was sent for the shelf streacher…

go get a box of grid squares… or batteries for the chem lights.

Don’t forget the checkered paint.

when I was a Navy Radar man newbies were sent for relative bearing grease

Weren’t most of us taken on snipe hunts as children?

At summer camp, in scouts, even a family reunion…

somebody would gather the kids for a night in the woods with flashlights and empty pillowcases….

I can remember my fellow scouts and I,

walking softly in the dark,

making the chirping noises we were assured would attract a wayward snipe….

while the troop leader and her teenage assistant tried not to giggle….

each remembering her own rite of passage…

years earlier, and years apart….

but somewhere along the same primrose path.

Boy Scout camp, 1967 – a skyhook & 150 feet of shore line………

…or blinker fluid for the turn signals on their vehicles.

Boy Scout camp, 1981 – bacon stretcher & smoke shifter

US Navy, 1972, go get the keys for the A-6, the pilot left them back in the ready room…

I have an actual left handed chef’s knife and left handed kitchen spoon.

There are some things you just don’t do to your Mom ;-)

A long weight…

White carbon paper or a bucket of steam . . .

I actually have a left-handed spatula….. :)

When I worked in General Aviation I sent a newbie to get a gallon of prop wash.

A cruel but hilarious trick at boot camp was to send the less educated among us over to the officer of the day to get his “masturbation papers”.

I’ll bet they have one at Spatula City…

I have a left-handed hammer. I had to put the bend in it myself, but it never gets borrowed by right-handers.

Sea bats.

note to Gene – don’t mess with volunteer help

In electrical transformer industry it was the “go get the lead stretcher”

The mechanic at my Dad’s garage sent me after a “differential diaphragm” because the customer had “tore out the ratios”!

There actually are left-handed scissors.

Going further, just go to “leftylefthanded.com” for all kinds of stuff.

If it weren’t for the fact that they do make left handed spatulas (I’ve purchased hem for my wife and daughter)….still, great strip

As an Air Force air traffic controller we were sent out to get the keys to the approach gates.

but there is such a thing as a left hand spatula

Wás sent out to get a can of elbow grease by my brother.Someone got him back in shop class for me, They heated up a wrench and when it cooled a little asked him to retrieve it for them. Not much of a burn.

Translation to all of these: You’re in my way, and need busy work to stay occupied.

When the owner of a company I worked for wanted to work in the service dept., we sent him on a wild goose chase trying to find metric screwdrivers. He gave up after 5 stores.

And like so many things, a right-handed spatula is useless to us southpaws!

For Boy Scouts it was a left handed smoke switcher.

I remember being subjected to those in a camp. The “errands” were always during nap time when we were confined to our cabins for a period of quiet boredom. I obediently went out for a nice walk in the woods, occasionally dropping by the “suppliers” to keep up the illusion. At the end of camp, they tried to explain to me the hoax and I explained to them how I got an hour of free time while they were cooped up. Interesting expressions.

Mean.

I am a leftie and for years I had a spatula on which the front edge sloped the “wrong way” (manufacturing defect, I guess). So yes, there could very well be such a thing as a left handed spatula.