What inanimate object would you wish to eliminate from existence?

I take attendance by having students answer a question.

What inanimate object would you wish to eliminate from existence?

Some students used their wish for the betterment of all:

• fossil fuels
• plastic in the ocean
• greenhouse gases

Others clearly hold personal grudges, whose explanations and origin stories I can only hypothesize:

• mushrooms
• sporks
• red onion
• fire moose
• sandals
• toe shoes
• socks
• aglet
• ties
• styrofoam
• rocks
• my hallmates' alarm clocks
• stickshift cars
• SSBM

"SSBM", based on a 10-second internet search, is either surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, or Super Smash Brothers Melee. Either way, it's destructive.

Some had very specific college-student-related ideas, ranging from "that makes sense" to "that seems actively hurtful towards me, your professor, I'm standing in this room right now trying to teach you":

• problem sets
• math
• final exams
• pens
• this pen
• sign-in sheets
• this question
• Swarthmore College

My favorite was the dull, "nothing", because it supports the hypothesis that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

This post's theme word is aglet --- a new word for me! --- which is the term to refer to the metal or plastic tube at the end of the shoelace that stops it from fraying. In a world without aglets, we bungee-cord our shoes on each morning and saunter about, oblivious to the alternate realities we have narrowly avoided.