If this were a scholarly essay, I would give you, without cost or obligation, an exhaustive definition of what a pin (or needle) actually is. But, relax and rejoice, this is not a scholarly essay. It is, in truth, an essay essentially free of fact. Pins are useful, so my wife tells me, because they are exceedingly thin and are capped by a very sharp point. This enables them to pierce layers of such things as cloth, paper aluminum foil, pants, underwear, thinly sliced food products and lots of other things. Unfortunately, they are extremely well endowed with the ability to penetrate human flesh, which they do with accomplished efficacy.

On the pin end opposite the point is the head, which is a tiny circular platform that is meant to protect the thumb or fingers used to push the pin into its target. This structure not only balances the point but, when the pin falls to the floor, buries itself in the rug in such a way that the point is pointing ever skyward. This enables the pin to enter the flesh of any unshod foot, or other unprotected body part that comes into contact with it. Pins so positioned seem to have an advanced appetite for such activity at least in our house where my beloved wife pursues her hobbies, one of which is sewing beautiful items for children, grandchildren, hospitals and others. It seems that pins are useful when holding pieces of unassembled clothing together while they await the sewing process.

I learned that these pins are called “silk pins” when my wife had asked me to purchase some for her. Where she learned the name is a deep mystery to me. Actually, she knows a lot of other things, too; a lot more than I do. For example, she knows how to knit beautiful sweaters, cozy scarves, breathtaking shawls, tiny hats for newborns and a lot of things that I don’t know the names of. She can sew anything; curtains for very large windows, bathrobes, dresses and other garments of whose functions I am not sure. She also sews and stuffs lots of funny little animals, which she donates to hospitals for children who must undergo operations. She has lots of other hobbies that involve other crafts, too. She’s good.

Now, while she is practicing her skills, I have not been sitting idly by. In fact, long before I even knew her, I had been amassing a substantial supply of skills, for example, I learned to whistle, not just the melodic tuneful whistle but the shrieking, piercing whistle that sends a chill through the listener; I learned to wiggle my ears, much to the distraction and annoyance of the girls sitting behind me in school, I learned to make an intriguing sound by placing one hand under the opposite armpit and bringing my other arm down on it sharply; at one time I could belch the entire alphabet. Somewhat later in my life I learned to find square roots and find cosines of numbers. I still can’t sew or knit or do any of the things at which my wife excels. But, hey, marriage is all about opposites.

Clearly, not all pins are silk pins. For example, there are the strangely named “safety pins,” which, as any recently-diapered baby could attest, if babies could, indeed, attest, are not very safe. But, in spite of their name, they can be very useful for replacing lost buttons and jammed zippers, holding pants and other garments aloft, piercing Super Glue and other small tubes whose openings are sealed by a thin metal membrane, cleaning fingernails, teeth and other body parts (many of these must be done with a measure of caution) and on and on. Of course, most of these functions can be done by many other kinds of pins: straight pins, crooked pins, bent pins, rusty pins and partly digested pins (only kidding about the partly digested pins.)

Aside from the vast assortment of pins for the female user, there are a few guy pins worthy of note. For example, there are cotter pins. These consist of a pair of shafts, one of which is longer that the other, each bent back upon itself, but not in the middle and leaving  small but important loops at the bend. These pins are modeled and named after their inventor, Sid Cotter, who had one leg shorter than the other (only kidding). The pin is inserted into a hole that has been drilled in a shaft and kept from going completely through the hole by the aforementioned loop. Once the two shaft pieces are through the hole they are bent, first the longer one around the shaft and finally the shorter one around the shaft but in the opposite direction. The purpose is to lock a cog, gear, wheel or other rotating object onto the shaft and keep it from flying off at great speed with highly unpleasant results to the operator of the shafted artifact or to a completely innocent bystander.

Another type of pin that is often employed by male users is the linchpin, which joins two metal plates, for example, a handle to a wagon so that some harassed parent can pull a complaining child to a destination that usually involves a treat or bribe for the passenger. There are lots of other pins for male or female users: hat pins, tie pins, pins that identify us as members of lodges or fraternities, subversive or secret organizations and many others that I won’t mention now because I can’t think of them.

Needles have very sharp points, but, unlike pins, their rear ends are not capped with a finger-protecting head. The reason for this is that they are intended to pass completely through the things they penetrate. At their unsharpened end, they sport a small hole that allows a dexterous and steady of hand to thread a length of thread through. When they are so armed, they can be used to sew two or more pieces of cloth together. Of course they could also be used to sew other things together, like paper, leather, thin plastic sheets, lips or other body parts that are in need of that service and removing an embedded splinter from a body part, piercing the soft metal membrane over tubes of glue, medications and snake-bite cures. Some needles are hollow and allow fluids to pass through them. Doctors and nurses use these with savage glee to pierce body parts of terrified children and other humans. Of course, at some point they, themselves, will be subject to the same indignities. So vengeance prevails, a wrong is righted and virtue is served.