The Great Staperclip Debate: Part One

Marge says paper clips, hands down. Staples don’t know how to multitask, and I have no patience for anyone or anything lacking functional versatility. Paper clips have uses yet to be discovered, but the staple’s versatility has obviously been exhausted. Here’s a great example. Just the other day, I heard, for the billionth time, “how much is a gram, really?” Well, if you’re British, you’re fluent with the kilogram or the stone or some other senseless weight measure equally offensive to Americans, but even you probably have no idea of what a gram actually feels like. And to all you stuffsters who also happen to be pharmacokineticists and/or dirty hippies, what are your scales really telling you? Just think of the paper clip, and there you are: the perfect way to describe the approximate product of force and mass required to generate a gram! Yes!


Also, they’re so colorful-some even have stripes!- and you can keep them in those little magnetic circular jars on your desk. (Does anyone not love desktop office supplies?) You can link them together into chains of infinite length, which you cannot do with staples. And, most importantly, have you ever tried to take a staple out with your fingernail, because you always lose your staple remover? (Staple removers are almost never kept on the actual desk; I bet your staple remover is buried in one of your lesser drawers too.) Do you like cracking your fingernail in half and slicing your finger open in the process? But you need that staple out, and you need that paper to retain its virginal crease-free dimension, because you want to copy it, or scan it to electronic format, without having to make a copy of it because you already have a copy of it and you don’t want to waste paper/energy/ink by copying something you already have because you care about trees and energy even though you hate the word ‘green’ when it’s used frivolously. A paper clip removed leaves no trace, but a staple removed leaves a scar.

No, seriously, I’m getting a bit worked up about this. Does anyone staple anymore? Why are we even debating this? I bet Brazil is already entirely staple-free at this point. They’re probably running their cars on recycled staples. Meanwhile, the leading Brazilian office supply store is called Grampeador. Have you been to your local Staples store lately?





Dear Readers, in the time between my initial response to this query and today, I have realized that I was wrong about staples. I haven’t slept the night through since I wrote this. I can’t believe those words were mine. I am so sorry. I’m not going to try to explain. Well, I have been dealing with a lot lately, okay? Right now, I just want to focus on moving on; I can’t afford to dwell on my mistakes. I’m sorry.


- Marge