1) Stand up 2) Turn to your right 3) Count objects you see, and stop at #3. 4) Write about whatever item #3 is.

#1 phone, #2 tape dispenser with no tape, #3 the stapler. The stapler is now returned to its rightful place beside the empty tape dispenser after being repeatedly stolen by a coworker. I’ve had to go track it down before. Why can’t we all have staplers? Then there would be no stapler stealing.

One would think, in this digital day and age, that the stapler would be as obsolete as the fax machine, but the company I work for has one of those, too. It’s right outside the door to my office. When someone decides to fax something to us, the fax phone rings so loudly that I can hear it in my office while wearing headphones. Fortunately, that’s fairly infrequent.

I digress. Let’s get back to the stapler. I actually use this stapler with regularity. I work as a graphic designer. Every time I work on a print job, a catalog for instance, I build a sample so you can tell which pages go where. Staple pages front to back and tape them together so that the person who approves it can see the full monty… page 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Ever since the tape dispenser ran out of tape, the stapler has been doing double duty as binding for my make-believe booklets. It doesn’t work as well as tape, but I’ve asked for weeks for more tape and haven’t received any. We make do the best we can.

This stapler of mine is rather fancy as far as staplers go. In appearance, it looks like your standard stapler, but when you staple paper together, unlike old-fashioned staplers that you’d have to put on a table and bang with your fist, my fancy stapler takes hardly any effort at all to staple. It’s like it has hydraulics built into it. It’s a space age stapler. It’s so far advanced in the stapler technology that, the first time I had to refill it with staples, I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. There’s a little schematic etched on it, but I’ve never been very good at following those. I’m a learn by doing kind of girl. I figured it out eventually. Fortunately, unlike the roll of tape I’m supposed to have, I actually do have replacement staples – a whole box of them. My stapler and I are good for a while.

Myself included, humans don’t generally give too much thought to a stapler. It’s just something that exists. It’s common enough and it’s been around long enough that we don’t generally think deeply on it, just like the zipper. However, someone had to invent it. Someone had to patent the zipper, the stapler and probably the staple. Someone probably made a good deal of money from those inventions. Or perhaps they were the types of inventions that don’t catch on right away. People scoffed at the concept. “Pish posh on these new-fangled office inventions! We get along just fine with our…” Hm, what precisely did they use before the stapler? A complicated origami system? Glue? Tape? Paper clips? Or did they just let pages freestyle in whatever order they so chose? Were paper clips and tape invented before or after the stapler? Was the stapler invented before or after the staple, or at the same time? Were there previous paper fastening inventions that weren’t quite as good, like the Hangler or the Flimster? Maybe there were twin brothers, the Staps – one invented the staple and one invented the stapler. Why does the word “staple” mean a basic, essential item and a bent piece of wire? Were the Stap Brothers so confident in their invention that they gave it that name out of hubris? Well, they were right. The stapler has become a staple.

These are all deep and meaningful questions with deep and meaningful answers somewhere. The internet, I’m sure, holds the key to to all of these queries and much more. Perhaps one day, I will be bored enough to look it up. That day is probably not today. Oh, no, not today… probably.

So, the next time you pick up a stapler, think of how lucky we are to live in a modern world where such mundane marvels exist. Give praise to the staple for it adds order to a chaotic world. It provides a sense of permanence; forever binding pages together (that is, until the staple remover comes along). Think of Eli and Jeremiah Stap and their great inventions, one which could not exist without the other: the staple and the stapler. Cheers.

And someone please get me some goddamn tape.