Coffee Cans Have Uses, But Not For “Romper Stompers”

Some time ago, I received a news release from Maxwell House coffee in which they listed all of the possible uses for a coffee can and for coffee itself.
Well, as you know, I can’t walk past a scrap of wood lying on the ground without wondering what I might use it for, so I found this list of ideas quite intriguing.
For instance, did you know that you can add a lustrous brown color to your hair by rinsing it in coffee? And at the same time, pouring coffee on a grill can help clean it!
Why do I find these two ideas somewhat contradictory?
Well here’s something that might never have occurred to me: If you have a white table cloth with a coffee stain on it, forget about removing the stain, just soak the entire table cloth in coffee and make it into a brown table cloth.
Hmmm … there are so many things in life to which that same reasoning could be applied. Like … if you have a wrinkle in your pants, take them off and wad them up until you have matching wrinkles all over! Or … if you car has a dent in the hood, run it into a wall and make matching dents! But I’m not knocking it. I actually have quite a few T-shirts that are stained by coffee and I’m willing to take a shot at the coffee dye job.
Other uses for coffee cans included the usual, such as having something to keep your paint or your fishin’ worms in, and there were some uses I thought were just variations on the use-them-to-keep-things-in theory, such as using them to hold cookies, nuts and bolts, or sugar.
And there were some ideas that were quite helpful. For instance, it never occurred to me to cut the top and bottom off a coffee can and put it around fragile seedlings in my garden; and it never occurred to me to use the cans to lift certain vine-like plants off of the ground. Interestingly, the list said that the metal cans end up also serving to ripen fruit on the vines quicker because they gather heat. And the heat repels insects!
But when I began thinking of uses I had witnessed for coffee cans during my childhood, my first thought was of the one thing nobody, but nobody, should ever encourage a kid to use coffee cans for. Remember the old children’s show “Romper Room?” Remember Romper Stompers?
I believe Romper Stompers were developed as some diabolical plot by someone who really didn’t like children and wanted to make sure as many as possible were killed by their parents. I remember seeing the Romper Room lady demonstrate how to make the Stompers by tying strings to coffee cans so you could hold them to the bottom of your feet and walk on them as coffee-can stilts. Then you could stomp all around the house and sing a Romper Stomper tune!
Yeah, I remember that my mother conveniently didn’t have any coffee cans I could use for the purpose.
But I guarantee that walking on Romper Stompers would not have made for a happy time once I got to clanging around the room for a few hours and scuffing circular holes throughout the hardwood floors. What were those Romper people thinking?
Well. Gotta go now. It’s time to get another cup of coffee.
Hey! There’s a use!