This week, as I struggled to get my medication into the dreaded Day/Night pill holdall, I wondered how we’d made such advances in technology, yet no one had built a better blister pack.
There seem to be stages with taking meds. At first, it’s just a little bottle that you carry with you in your bag. Then you upgrade to the pill box, which has the days of the week stamped on the top of each receptacle. And, finally, you resign yourself to the mega box, with AM on one side and PM on the other in an ultra-bland 200 point font (Arial Mild), because any curl on the ‘a’ could have you mistaking it for a ‘p’. Walk with it anywhere, and you’ve got your own set of maracas goin’ on.
I’m trying to be better about taking my pills when I’m supposed to and, really, the best way to do it is to have them all in those boxes. So, I sat down on the couch one night, with the box on one side and the bag of meds on the other, and started unblistering little white discs until my thumbs hurt. It’s not that I’m on 30 pills a day (said she, defensively) – it’s just that if you’re trying to fill AM and PM slots for a week, that’s 14 right there. The whole palaver is almost enough to make me want to get healthy.
If extricating the contents of those packs wasn’t bad enough, I struggled with opening the pill box receptacles. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I attacked with forefinger, all fingers, then thumb, before they finally yielded. And it wasn’t a smooth manoeuvre either – they opened with a jerk. All I could think was how did seniors manage this? Jerk it the wrong way, and there would be tablets everywhere. You wouldn’t want to be trying to take your blood pressure dose in airport customs.
I appreciate that depending on who lives in the house, particularly children, you have to be careful about how easy it is to access medication. So, can’t we invent something voice activated? I harken back to the classic Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoon ‘Ali Baba Bunny’ where entrance to the treasure cave was gained by pronouncing “Open Sesame”. (It speaks volumes about my level of maturity that I go with Chuck Jones, rather than the actual origin of the phrase – from ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ in Antoine Galland’s version of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, circa early 18th century.)
Thing is, it isn’t just pill packs that are difficult to open. There seems to be a trend of jars, receptacles, bags and boxes that are specifically designed to remain closed, no matter the methods employed to unlock them.
Let’s begin with those small ketchup and mayonnaise packets. I have fairly dextrous fingers with decent fingernails. I know how to follow instructions (“Tear here”), yet can I get into any of them? I’ve spent half a movie at the cinema focused on nothing but applying some mayonnaise to my chicken wings (See: “ … almost enough to make me want to get healthy … ”), with pathetic results. For starters, your hands have to be absolutely bone dry, otherwise, you can forget it. But even then, you tug and you pull and it refuses to tear. Even when it does, you only get a small squirt, which means you have to repeat the process. By the time you’ve looked up from your cold food, Tom Cruise has successfully evaded all the baddies and is parachuting to victory.
The packets in my hair-colour boxes (yes, I know, it’s hard to believe that this isn’t natural) must be produced by the same manufacturer. There is a small plastic vial that adds a nice scent to the formula, so you don’t end up with beautifully glossy hair that smells like someone peed on your head (ammonia, folks … ammonia). I learned a while back that either I have a pair of strong scissors nearby, or I do without the perfume. You’re supposed to be able to simply twist the top off by hand. Ha! I’d challenge John Cena to give it a go. Every time I’ve tried to twist it, it turns into a prison shiv: Thin, sharp and steadfastly unbreakable.
You might think that as items get bigger, they might be easier to handle. Not so. It’s a good thing that pickles aren’t an emergency life-saving foodstuff, because that jar of Vlasic was not giving up its bounty without a fight last week. I tried opening it the old-fashioned way, and nearly rubbed the skin off the palm of my hand. Then I tried whacking the bottom of the jar to get the lid to pop, followed by using the end of a spoon to try and lift it. No dice. The pickles just sat there, confident in the knowledge that they were safe, mocking me.
A jar of Tostitos’ Salsa Con Queso also decided that not today, bobo, was I going to enjoy any of its cheesy goodness. It was late at night, and I suddenly had a craving for tortilla chips and dip. I should have tried to open the dip before I breached the bag. Yada, yada, yada … I ended up with carpal tunnel and a mouthful of dipless chips.
They always say that things slowly come back around as you age. When you were a baby, you were in diapers. When you’re older, you may find yourself in them again.
When you were a baby, your parents childproofed cupboards, toilets and anything else they didn’t want you getting into. When you’re older, you can’t get into anything because you don’t have the hand strength of Eddie Hall.
Regarding food, it’s beginning to dawn on me that perhaps the containers are trying to save me from myself. When was the last time someone screamed because they couldn’t peel a banana? Has an apple ever thwarted someone’s attempts to eat it? Grapes, spinach, peppers, avocadoes, eggs … none of them have presented an insurmountable challenge. Meanwhile, cracking open a jar of Nutella could try the patience of Job.
Maybe this is a new diet trend to replace Atkins, cabbage soup, Paleolithic … If you can’t open it, you don’t eat it. Just watch the pounds fall off.
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