Our world is geared toward younger families with children. First, there are refrigerators. Ever notice how the doors are now made to hold gallons of milk? Uhm, how many senior citizens or single people need gallons of milk? My fridge has a nifty feature called pull-out shelves for smaller children so they can get items in the back more easily. I don’t think I have ever pulled a shelf forward to reach something, and I have very short arms.

Why don’t they offer a younger family model, a single person model, and a senior citizens model? Seriously. Younger families need all those features such as gallons on the door, extra wide shelves for large platters, etc. Single people like me don’t need that stuff, it just makes the door heavier as we load smaller bottles on the door to make up for the extra space. Seniors keep small amounts of food in their fridge and most don’t use a gallon of milk in a month!

Stoves are made to be childproof. All knobs are now in the back. Uhm, sorry, but I’m short with short arms, and I can’t easily reach to the back of the stove, particularly if a pot is on top of the stove cooking heartily. Every stick an arm over a gas stove burner trying to reach the back? It’s an easy way to remove arm hair, that’s for sure.

My water coolor is childproof. I can’t get hot water out of it unless I push the hot water button a certain way. A service tech once told me that his kids showed him how to use it.

Vehicles have to be the worst. Let’s see, in my SUV the driver and front seat passenger have childproof buttons, and if depressed, they don’t allow you to open the door from the inside, just the outside. I had no idea what that button was until my own parents called me after they bought a new Toyota and were stuck in a parking lot, unable to get out of the car!

This past weekend I had someone in my backseat and they were unable to exit the vehicle unless I opened the door from the outside. I unlocked the door. I locked the door. I set the childproof lock in the front. I unset it. I kept my car in gear. I shut it off. I did everything but dance naked on top of it and the door would not open. I figured it was something with the car alarm, so brought it in today to the alarm place. What was it? CHILDPROOF FEATURE. They opened up the back door and on the frame of the door was a button that was engaged, and over it was a label - CHILDPROOF LOCK. Gee, why didn’t the auto manual tell me about this?? And I had it at the Toyota dealership for hours yesterday!

Why don’t they offer the option to get it non-childproof? I will never, ever have children in my vehicle.

Oh, do you know next year it’s mandatory that all new vehicles have the pull-up type of window knob for electric windows (do vehicles come without electric windows?). Why? Deaths of children who lean on the rocker type switch in a car while the window is partly open. Uhm, why not just make it so that the window will NOT go up if there is a foreign object in the way?