stainless steel

I think stainless steel may be one of the most deceptive products ever perpetrated. Sure, it doesn't stain permanently, but it dirties up like the dickens. You can't touch the stuff. Given stainless steel's propensity for attracting and displaying smudgy fingerprints, I must infer that whoever originally conceptualized its use on household appliances like microwaves, dishwashers, and refrigerators must have been raised in a home wherein formal long white gloves were standard issue, as if a trip to the fridge to fetch a Snack Pack were a distinguished affair on par with attending an awards ceremony or a black tie save-the-whales benefit. I've noticed that, at least in our house, breaths breathed from the whole other side of the kitchen show up on our stainless steel refrigerator as if I'd wiped an un-showered and therefore greasy forehead back and forth across the french doors and between refrigerator magnets for a solid half an hour.

I find it unbearable the way that all our stainless steel appliances live in a state of constant discoloration that can only be undone with the most generous application of liquid cleaner and the most earnest scrubbing, at which point the smudges and blemishes do finally relent. So, technically, yes, it doesn't stain. But naming it stainless steel seems somewhat nebulous, as if to underscore the material's singular and rather oblique merit, while failing to mention it's far more audacious defect. It's a little like naming the criminal act of battery and assault "murderless touching." Or referring to maleria as the "cancer-free bug that's been going around." Or dubbing Osama Bin Laden as "Mr. Not-Hitler."

So now I know what you're thinking: "Did he really just equate stainless steel to Osama Bin Laden? That seems rather excessive." Well, now you know just how strongly I feel about fingerprint smudges.