Tri-State Neighbor: South Dakota Farm Newspaper

Occasionally people ask me what I do with all my time now that I'm retired. An answer is forming in my brain. I have not used it yet but one of these days I am going to say, “What do I do with my spare time? I open things; that's what I do.”

I don't know whether it's because I am getting older or because packaging is getting more secure, but I don't seem to be able to open anything anymore. The directions on how to open a package now take more room on the label than the directions on how to use the item inside.

For example:

€Push down and turn;

€Tear at notch (a microscopic notch, I might add); pull back foil;

€Squeeze sides while turning;

€Push down, squeeze and turn simultaneously;

€Sealed for your protection; break seal at perforation;

€Remove cap; turn nozzle clockwise three and one half turns;

€Flip tab up.

There is always more to the instructions than meets the eye. “Flip tab up,” is, on the surface, a simple instruction. Unfortunately, the tab is wedged down so firmly in place that it will not flip up, ever, for any reason.

When I encounter an adversary, like the non-flipping flip tab, I eventually resort to the hack-and-attack method. I grab any nearby sharp object and hack at the item in hand. I poked and pried at the non-flipping flip tab with a nail clipper, then a screwdriver. The tab responded to a healthy stab from the screwdriver and flipped into the open position. And there it remains.

Once I get something open, I never close it tightly again. All around my house are pop-top containers with their pops topped.

I have purchased and discarded seven different brands of toilet bowl cleanser because I can't get any of them open. I understand the need for toilet bowl cleansing products to be impenetrable - they are poisonous, dangerous, and often stored child-level under a bathroom sink. But they do me little good sitting unopened and pristine in storage.

Even good old wholesome milk now comes in hard-to-open consumer protecting packages.

Plastic pull-off tabs coupled with a screw-off cap are what the consumer now finds on milk bottles. For juice, it's the opposite. Once the consumer is past the screw-off cap, she finds a pull-off tab buried inside between her and the juice.

I went to a kitchen gadget party recently and, surrounded by an array of kitchen items for the sophisticated cook, I selected a jar opener. First things first. If one can't open the ingredients, one can't cook with the ingredients.

I have spent many frustrating moments trying to get new ketchup bottles to release their contents. I nearly resorted to hack-and-attack (which doesn't paint a pretty kitchen picture in my mind) when it occurred to me that, perhaps, the bottles are double-sealed. Sure enough, twist off the top of a ketchup bottle and one finds a second, interior seal with a microscopic lift-and-tear tab.

I am getting paranoid about my ability, or lack of, to open things. My question is no longer, “Can I afford it?” or “Do I need it?” Now I ask myself, “Will I be able to open it?”

Before I put an item into the shopping cart, I ponder whether I want to dedicate the hour or more that will be needed to unpackage the package. Will I have the confidence, experience, physical strength, manual dexterity, and mental acuity?

Anytime a person has that much trouble and experiences that much frustration with something, conspiracy theories are bound to emerge.

Here's mine: The people who design package sealing devices are the same people who design cell phones.