What is this? 🤔🤔🤔
My four year old niece jauntily walked in to the library. During the whole summer I was trying to figure out what to do with my little people so they won't get bored and that wouldn't eat into my budget. It hadn't dawned on me that the local library is a great place to hang out until the last 2 weeks of summer. At our local branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia were free STEM activities, free vouchers for the Art Museum, free movies, free A/C, free books that were being given away, and free lunch for the kiddos. And free is my favorite price.
As we walked toward the area with STEM toys, a huge chunk of metal caught her eye. She had seen it before, but my older niece was using it and the four-year-old got distracted by something else, as four-year-olds tend to do. But this time, it was all hers. She walked over to it and took it in. It looked like a keyboard, which she's very familiar with, but a very weird one. Instead of rectangular keys that are flush with the rest of the board, the keys were round and sticking up. And the keyboard didn't have a screen attached to it, so it couldn't be a laptop. In the place the screen was a piece of paper, and when she hit the keys the letter would appear on the paper instead of on a screen. It was so peculiar, yet familiar.
With curious innocence she asked, "What is this?" and I replied "It's a typewriter". Its name must have seemed so strange. She definitely knows what 'type' means; it's what you do with a keyboard, a tablet and a phone. I believe she knows what 'write' means, but the two of those together must not have made any sense. So she drew a conclusion of what this machine must be as she exclaimed her joy in using it: "This printer is so awesome!"
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Aside from being a warm memory from the days leading up to my big trip, what does this little anecdote have to do with being in India? I too had a similar experience with one of the Airbnbs I stayed in. The machine looked familiar and I could tell what it was supposed to do, but I had never seen anything like it. It had two different compartments and knobs that Drain/Fill and Wash/Spin. In truth, I was confused intimidated by it so I avoided it for two weeks. Instead of using the machine, I opted to do the work by hand. Take a look. Can you guess what it is?
After two weeks, my curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to use my brain to figure out how to use a semi-automatic washing machine (that is to say I Googled it). I found a Youtube video showing how to use the washing machine and it was as simple to use as the lady in the video showed. The spin cycle in the second compartment got out so much water that the clothes seemed to dry in the sun very quickly, much quicker than the clothes that were still soaking-sopping wet after being wrung out by hand.
And so, like my niece, I declare "This semi-automatic washing machine is awesome!"
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If you're a little bored and want to add some useless trivia to your knowledge, check out the links below on the history of washing machines. And yes, apparently you can purchase semi-automatic washing machines in the US.
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