Photo: King Huang, flickr.
While she’s never considered herself a trendsetter, Edith Corbett, 24, has recently found herself at the helm of a campaign pushing for a return to a traditional practice, reminiscent of simpler times.
“I don’t use paper maps. Who does?” she explained. “It seemed a shame to leave it empty and so I began putting my gloves in there. Usually two pairs, but sometimes as many as four.”
Many members of Generation X and later can probably identify with the phenomenon of glove compartments that contained everything but.
“My dad kept every car repair receipt he ever got in our glove box,” Darius Beeks recalled. “After 8 years they looked a bit like papier-mâché, what with the leaking tubes of hand lotion that someone—I don’t know who—kept stashed in there.”
A recent survey at Mount Allison University found that unused cigarette lighters, child seat restraint hardware, fuses, hand tools, maps, and insurance and registration papers were the most common residents of Canadian glove compartments. Additionally, some manufacturers have begun crafting a separate storage box for the vehicle owner’s manual, leaving Canadian glove boxes in danger of becoming even more empty and less relevant than ever before.
“It’s the Baby Boomers what ruined it,” Walter Pierce, 93, suggested. “That hippy-dippy counterculture jibber-jabber sent the whole world straight to hell. Suddenly it was: ‘Let’s have sex with everyone and keep condoms, lube and weed in there!’ Gloves be damned!”
A random sampling of wandering Millennials found that, of the few who actually owned cars, most had already reclaimed the glove compartment for exclusive use of their gloves. The remainder identified bike saddle bags, coat pockets, or their hands as their preferred glove storage location.