Wrinkly Bits
A Blog by Gail Cushman
I needed toothpaste, you know toothpaste. It comes in a squeezy container, a tube. You probably pay $3.00 for a tube of toothpaste. Everybody knows what I’m talking about.
This week I ran out of toothpaste and went to one of the stores that has a gatekeeper, a big box store. When you walk in he or she makes sure no one enters with what they are going to buy. You have to show your name rank, and serial number, but once you are in, they leave you alone, meaning you can’t find what you want. Well Tough Tootsie for you, you didn’t need it anyway. I found the toothpaste aisle, and wouldn’t you know it, I counted 16 different products, all related in some manner to the one item I was searching for: One plain tube of toothpaste.
It looked like I was going to have to buy a bundle, so I sorted through the 16 products, some of which I had never heard of before. Cowboy told me I’d have to buy a 55-gallon drum of toothpaste, and thank heavens he was wrong. No barrels of toothpaste, which was a relief.
I found what might work, a five-pack of toothpaste, with the bold print notice on the label: Easy Open. Five packs would last five months, so I picked it up and headed out. My cart now contained 47 other items, none of which were on my shopping list but all of which I needed. I looked at the cart and sighed. Hopefully it would be less than $300 which is what my last tube of toothpaste cost. $256 was the cost of this week’s bill. Toothpaste is mighty pricey these days.
I carried the four boxes of miscellaneous, but necessary items into the house and started putting them away and took my toothpaste into the bathroom. I needed to brush my teeth. Although the toothpaste tube says it holds six ounces, in actuality, you can only use about five ounces because the last ounce refuses to come out, which is a source of irritation to me. When you buy a 16-ounce bottle of coke or olive oil or Kerosene, you can use the whole 16 ounces. Not so with toothpaste. It stops at five, and then what do you do with the toothpaste tube, which says “recyclable.” Right. Whatever.
My toothpaste package contained five boxes, wrapped with cellophane. I used my oh-so-sharp fingernails and began to rip. Or rather tried to rip. No go. I found a scissors in the bathroom tool drawer and started prying and poking. No go. I would not open. I headed to the kitchen for a knife. It wouldn’t stab through the cellophane, so it was a no go, too. I rounded up Cowboy and he used his handy-dandy Leatherman. He used four functions: knife, tweezers, wrench, and finally resorted to the wee-scissors, which I think are for cutting wees, but I’m not sure. Success. We opened the cellophane-wrapped package and the five boxes tumbled out.
Then came the boxes, plastic sealed as well as glued. I noticed the expiration date of August 2027. A year out. Without a Leatherman and wee scissors, it might take the whole danged year to open my toothpaste. But Cowboy is strong, and his Leatherman knife fixed that one right up. Then we got to the tube of toothpaste.
Snap on cap, and it opened. First try. Hallelujah.
After that adventure, I thought it a good idea to read the directions. They were in tiny print, only written in English. Bummer, because I am trying to learn foreign languages by interpreting Mandarin, Spanish, Polish, plus more, on food product packages. If only they had directions of how to open the dad-gummed box.
