DON'T PUT BABIES IN HERE

Today I earned the privilege of becoming Headmistress of the School of Stupid Stupids.

I received an unsolicited package in the mail yesterday from Walgreens.com. I sized it up, gave it a few squeezes, and concluded that it kind of felt like a package of sanitary pads, which would technically make sense coming from Walgreens.com, even though I never have and never will order pads from the internets.

Curious, I ripped through the weird mylar baggie envelope-y thing the pad-feeling things were wrapped in and I was pleased to find that inside, it was decidedly NOT pads, but rather a set of photo-coasters that my mom sent.

[My favorite photo-coaster, you ask? The one featuring my lil sister and I sporting our Ralphie For The Modern Era very shiny Candies tracksuit pajama Christmas presents. At the time the photo was taken, my sister put hers on and said, "I feel like a 12-year old Mexican girl." When Kevin saw that particular photo-coaster, he said that she looked like Lady Sovereign. Six or a half dozen, I say.]

Anyways, back to that Headmistress of the School of Stupid Stupids business.

I keep a shredder in my office so that all of those identity thieves prowling the dumpsters outside my apartment can't, you know, steal my identity, and I use it to shred anything with my name and/or address on it. The weird mylar baggie envelope-y thing containing the photo-coasters totally qualified as bearing both.

Before feeding it into the shredder (the 2nd cheapest one available at Target, by the way - I figured the cheapest one wasn't a good idea, but also didn't feel like springing for anything moderately expensive, so 2nd cheapest won out), I paused - should this go in there? Should I just go mental on it with my scissors to prevent identity theft?

No, no, no. The only way to keep my precious personal information private would be to put it in the shredder. I'll just fold it a few times and pass it through.

So I feed it in slowly...and the shredder starts chewing at it...and chewing...sloooooowly...and then I notice a bubble forming at the top of the weird mylar baggie envelope-y thing...and it begins to feed even mooooore sloooooowly....

And then it just stops.

I try reversing. I try using another piece of paper, then an envelope, then a folded-up cover of some magazine I got from Mo's swag bag at SXSW. No dice. This bitch is stuck.

It dawns on me - maybe I shouldn't have stuck a weird mylar baggie envelope-y thing into a paper shredder.

I unplug it and look at the 6 diagrams printed on top of the shredder and decipher their meanings, in order to see if this guy was meant to handle anything other than paper:

- Danger! Warning!
- Don't put babies in here
- Don't high-five the machine while in operation
- Don't put neckties in here
- Don't put 80's hair metal bands in here
- Don't spray paint graffiti on here

Long story short, I ended up sitting on the floor for well over 15 minutes, using a dull pair of scissors to dig out every last stretchy piece of weird mylar baggie envelope-y thing from the shredder's teeth. Eddie Cat Halen watched on in fascination.

Lesson?
If a piece of machinery indicates that you shouldn't feed it babies, neckties, or 80's hair metal bands, you probably shouldn't feed it weird mylar baggie envelope-y things, either.