“Laughter is the best medicine”, and I am thankful to the newspapers for keeping me in the pink of health, by providing me with my daily dose of funnies. Two news articles caught my eyes today morning, it’s evening and I am still laughing. The first one was about a ‘Chastity Garter’, that warns men of cheating girl friends/wives.

According to Wikipedia, “Garters are articles of clothing narrow bands of fabric fastened about the leg, used to keep stockings up. Normally just a few inches in width, they are usually made of leather or heavy cloth, and adorned with small bells and/or ribbons.”

“A Chastity Garter that sends men a text message if their girl-friends or wives try to cheat on them. The garter monitors rising pulse rate as well as surface moisture levels on the skin and when these apparent signals of sexual stimulation occur, a text message is sent to alert the woman’s husband/boy-friend. The woman can’t take off the garter without an automatic text message being sent. Edward and Lucinda Hale, are the brains behind this idea, they came up with this after infidelity threatened their relationship. They wanted to come up with something, for removing the temptation by making straying impossible.”

First, I want to congratulate this wonderful couple for their invention and second I want to say, what were you thinking of? What kind of a sick joke is this? Are we living in the 21st century? Why not a chastity guard for men, to monitor their pulse rate and surface moisture levels, among other things?

I mean, I am appalled at this news item. Imagine a young lady, who is so in love with this suspicious guy, happens to be wearing this contraption, though why anyone in their right minds would do such a thing, for arguments sake lets imagine her wearing it. While watching an epic romance, her pulse rate increases, mine does whenever I am watching a romantic movie, and her surface moisture levels rises, her husband who is in the middle of an important presentation, gets a text message saying,” Your wife is planning to cheat on you, rush home before she acts on her crazy impulse”. He drops the remote, mumbles an apology to the foreign investors, who are thinking of investing in this company. Our man tells them, my wife is about to cheat on me, I have to go home now, not realizing that by the time he makes the 45 minute drive back home, the act would have been committed and all evidence removed from the scene of crime except the Chastity Garter. The surface moisture levels can be explained any which way. So much for the wonder invention!!!

Another flaw in this is, what if the wife/girl-friend decides to go swimming, or falls into a lake, will she get electrocuted or will her garter start screaming, “Cheating woman.” What if the husband is stuck in such a place where there is no signal, no network? The woman can’t take off the garter without an automatic text message being sent, so she waits endlessly for his text, which will take a long time coming.

They wanted to come up with something, for removing the temptation by making straying impossible. Apparently, they had not heard of this famous quote by Oscar Wilde,

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. ~Oscar Wilde,”

The second news item headline was,” Just clap to unhook this Bra”, another howler. “Randy Sarafan, a US engineer, has invented a bra clasp that comes off when you clap your hands. Metropolitan in the UK reported that, this is an answer to millions of men and women who struggle with unhooking bra clasps. Sarafan was inspired to make this after reading about wacky electronic undergarments, sold in Syria, like musical Knickers.”

“Those of us in Western cultures have a thing or two to learn from the Syrians about gaudy electronic lingerie. Henceforth, it became my mission to fast-forward lingerie technology in the West,” The Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying.

Okay, with all due respect, what is this? It brings to mind, a nursery rhyme that I used to recite in school, if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. With this invention, the rhyme will go, if you want to be happy, go where there are a lot of women, and clap your hands.

You will suddenly find bras of all shapes and sizes, makes and materials, flying about, like autumn leaves. It will be raining Bras, thanks to the simple act of clapping our hands. I know it’s a bit extreme, but you do get my point, right? Another scenario, you are attending a formal dinner with your boy friend and are wearing a low-cut designer gown, the chief guest finishes his speech and everybody claps, you, and a few other women, clutch your bosoms, why? Because your bras snapped open.

Every day, there will be hundreds of women, wearing this wonder bra, so that their boy friends don’t have to struggle with the clasps, and while out there, if some body clapped, they would be left clutching on to their tops and dignity.

We are becoming a lazy nation, full of lazy people. We already have toilets with automatic spray jets, hand dryers; very soon we will have automatic pants-pull downers, so that we just stand in the washroom and have our pants drop.

“So many tangles in life are ultimately hopeless that we have no appropriate sword other than laughter. ~Gordon W. Allport”

Lucks aka Sulekha