If you grew up with a Mum like mine, you’re probably familiar with the above phrase (I’m assuming it’s not just an Australian thing…) In our house there were “good” scissors (roughly, the cooking scissors, mum’s sewing scissors, the pinking shears). Any attempt to do something mundane like cut paper with the “good” scissors prompted an outraged maternal cry of “NOT THE GOOD SCISSORS”. In later years, this prompted us to enquire where the evil scissors were (and I bet Joss Whedon could do a lot with that concept) but then we would resignedly hunt around in the scary junk drawer for the generic plastic handled scissors which were deemed acceptable for whatever we were proposing to cut.

Now that I own my own expensive cooking shears and sewing scissors, I can relate to the concept a little better and have always had a pair of “not the good scissors” in my own junk drawer.

Until this morning. When I went to find them so I could cut some wrapping paper and, well, this happened:

Which I guess makes them ex-scissors in anyone’s book. So I now need a new pair of evil scissors. Which would make them newer than any of my other scissors and hence, potentially “good” scissors in their own right. Good-not-the-good-scissors is one of those circular concepts that might just lead to the universe exploding in a poof of exasperation and existential uncertainty. Leaving me with still no not-the-good scissors.

To make things even more confusing, on closer inspection, my ex-not-the-good-scissors appear to be an old pair of Wiltshire staysharps which suggests quite strongly that they started off life as a pair of Mum’s actual “good” scissors. I seem to remember the Wiltshires being her sewing scissors of choice at one point. Oh how the poor scissors have fallen. A cautionary tale. Or perhaps a tale of valiant utensil service over the last twenty years or so. You decide : )…I have scissors to buy.