Baffled by Baffles

Just when I thought the appliances were behaving, my Cadillac threw a baffle at me.

Baffled?

I was, too.

The other day, the dryer made the most horrible clunking noise. Since all family members and pets were accounted for, I wondered who would have put a brick in my dryer.

No brick. It was one of those tumbler bar thingies banging around and around the dryer drum.

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One of the new dryer baffles.

Only they aren’t called tumbler bars. They are called baffles.

Okey dokey lokey.

Now my dryer has only one baffle. The dryer still runs, but it’s really hard to dry anything. Sheets and towels are the worst. They tumbled over and over until they are rolled up into a tight ball that’s dry on the outside and damp on the inside. I have to shake everything out every so often during the drying process.

This is one case when being less baffled isn’t a good thing.

The term baffled me, so I looked it up. I found almost no explanation about why the bars are called baffles. Maybe someone didn’t know what to call them.

Turns out the word “baffle” doesn’t just mean “bewildered.”

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Source: dictionary.com

I suppose the bars are used to deflect or regulate the movement of the clothes in the dryer so they don’t roll up into a ball. The use as a mechanical term didn’t happen until the 1920s, according to dictionary.com. Before that, it’s been around for centuries to describe perplexing or frustrating someone else.

Do you think we’re gonna call the Maytag Repairman? Nope. We ordered new baffles and watched a few videos (my favorite was a series by a guy with his arm in a sling) that made it look simple. Seriously, if he could do it with one arm, we should be able to do it. Not baffling at all!

(I crack myself up.)

The baffles just arrived! I’ll be back in a bit…..

Do you know what is baffling? The new baffles do not come with screws!

I’m not so sure that 5th definition is all that obsolete! It’s a good thing we found all the screws in the base of the dryer. With the vacuuming of the accumulated dryer lint, the entire process took 20 minutes.

I now know that our dryer came with two different baffles (two long and one short), but we didn’t order a new short one. We’ll just have to see if the clothes get tumbled properly with three equally-sized baffles.

Anything baffling with you lately? Or, better yet, have you learned anything new that would prevent a baffling state of mind?

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