What the Hell is a Crampon? Guesstimates and Speculations

Why does this word sound so familiar but I have no clue what the heck it is?

I’ve read the word in books before but going off the various contexts I’ve read it in, I still have no idea what the fuck a crampon is.

So rather than googling it in the relative safety of my brain’s quiet chaos, I figured it would be more my style to scream my ignorance to the world (or my five faithful readers) and use the farthest reaches of my brain bag to guess what this word might mean.

Here goes everything:

Well, obviously, my first guess is a tampon that assists in the painful PMS symptom of cramping.

Rather than a peasant's blood stauncher, we present the crampon: a blood stauncher with the added benefit of being soaked in some sort of analgesic drug!

Direct pain relief right into the bloodstream!

Hawzaa for the crampon — relieving burdensome cramps since just now, when I made this product up in the dark and stormy hollows of my thinker factory.

It is clear I don’t know how the human body works.

I want to say it’s some sort of fish?

Either a fish or a creepy ass looking bird that stares into your soul while you’re just trying to have a nice friggen relaxing day at the beach.

A cooking utensil.

Like probably a pair of tongs with steam release holes in them so they can be used for fishing out soft pretzels from water baths during the cooking process.

“Hey, Steve, grab the crampon; these ‘zels are bustin’ at the seams!”

What I do know is it must possess some sort of pinching mechanism.

This idea is coming off the heels of my last one, but a pinching mechanism must be involved in anything called a crampon.

This is actually really frustrating, you guys, because the word seems so familiar. Why do I not know what it is!? Crampon. Craaaampon.

Is it of the hard candy variety?

Like those teeth-shattering lemon drops that your great aunt Gerty stores away in the cookie tins from the 1940s?

Maybe it’s not a fish but a tool to catch a fish?

It doesn’t so much sound like a sentient being but rather something that might kill a sentient being.

Wait. What’s the definition of sentience anyways? Is it just something that is aware? Or must it be of intelligent design? Like, when the robots become sentient, we’re all dead, right? But robots are already of intelligent design so now I’m super confused.

Ugh. Really managed to get myself off track here.

Binoculars?

Bifocals? Why am I associating crampons with eyesight?

Now I can’t stop thinking of that time Homer Simpson’s eyes crusted over because if we were ever going to name that moment something, I think it should be called the Crampon — Eyes Gone moment.

Shoes?

Those weird platform shoes with fish living in the plastic see-through soles?

That was a dumb guess. People haven’t worn shoes like that for decades. It’s clear this isn’t going anywhere. So I’ll just Google it.

One moment please…

..

.

GREAT GLOBS OF GOOSEBERRIES!

The fish shoes were actually my closest guess.

Crampons are spikey spikes that get hooked on the bottom of snow boots for traversing over ice.

CRAMPONS!

Lindsay Rae Brown might have just found her new calling — guessing the definitions of words she doesn’t know. The amount of stuff and junk LRB doesn’t know could likely fill a pretty substantial corner of the internet so this new venture might keep her going for years!

If reading about all the stuff and junk Lindsay doesn’t know, isn’t your bag, baby, here’s a list of stories that her writer friends wrote about her because she’s a raging egomaniac and asked them all to write stories about her.

(She’s also really great at putting together sentences. Obviously.)