The responsibilities of parenthood include handling unforeseen disasters with a hearty mix of humor and poise, as illustrated by the following letter I recently sent to a manufacturer of audio equipment:

Grado Labs
4614 Seventh Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11220

Dear Good Grado People:

I was fortunate to receive a set of your SR60 headphones for my birthday four years ago. They performed admirably at everything I threw at them: loud obnoxious music, soft obnoxious music, computer games, and a 30-watt guitar amplifier. But no matter how much pride you take in your engineering and manufacturing methods, it is my duty to inform you that your headphones experience severe failure when confronted by a four-year-old boy with garden shears.

As much as I would like to blame you for not encasing the headphones’ cables within some hyper-reinforced sleeve, I readily admit that all fault is my own — although I do reserve the right to blame the garden shears’ manufacturer for neglecting to include a smart-technology safeguard against cutting “Daddy’s Things." I suppose that with the vast selection of other items in the house to be severed, I should be quite pleased that a non-living object bore the brunt of my child’s wrath. I know the cats are.

I have enclosed the remains of my SR60s for your inspection and amusement. Perhaps your service department sees this sort of thing all the time, and can order up a “Scrape ‘n’ Tape� or a “Solder ‘n’ Sew,� if they use diner lingo as I hope they do. If, however, the hope for repair is as remote as I believe, I feel it only appropriate that the phones are returned to the fires in Brooklyn from which they were forged, and laid to rest with all due honors.

At the very least, I would like you to send your latest catalog along with a report on my SR60s. And if you are ever to develop a line of titanium-cabled phones, please keep me in mind.

Sincerely,

Michael Genrich

Posted by Michael Genrich at August 02, 2003 07:41 PM