“Plastics, Ben, Plastics”

“Plastics”

“Plastics.”

“Plastics, sir?”

“Plastics.”

“Plastics.”

“Yes, Ben.  Plastics.”

This is what I remember from the movie The Graduate. Mr. Robinson is giving young newly-college-graduated Ben advice for Ben’s future in two syllables.  “Plastics.”

How our modern culture has taken that “wisdom” to heart!

Plastics are everywhere.  One of the major decisions shoppers face every day is “Paper or Plastic?”  As with every technological advancement, there is a downside to the invention of a new product.  My lifetime struggles with Plastics fall into generally two categories:  Feats of Strength and Feats of Patience. The first Feat of Strength I witnessed involved Polley’s lovable and colorful grandfather.  Granddaddy was pushing eighty and part of his morning routine involved imbibing about fifteen pills for various ailments.  I watched him fail at a Feat of Strength as he tried, unsuccessfully to open his bottle of diabetes medicine.  His was squeezing the top of the bottle tightly, his face scrunched up into a grimace, and as he exerted all his strength, he exclaimed, “#@$%&#$ damn childproof caps!!!”

With lots of practice, unfortunately, I have mastered the Feat of Strength involving childproof caps, but I still fail at other similar challenges.  We drink a great deal of bottled-zero-calories-flavored water in my home, and twisting that white cap off tests my mettle.  Believing in the power of the mind to overcome matter, including Plastics, I imagine I am crawling to the top of a sand dune in the Sahara, my eyes squinting against the oppressive sun, my khaki shirt clinging to my sweat-and-sand encrusted body, my mouth drained of all moisture.   At the top of the dune is a bottle of flavored water—-Acai Blueberry Pomegranate—-the sides of the bottle dripping with cool condensation.  The Feat of Strength commences as I summon what little strength I have from the farthest limbs of my body as I begin the twisting off of the cap.  Eons are swept away on the winds of the Sahara, but I keep at it.  My strength begins to fail as the cap refuses to budge…..I start to tire, my age and my Parkinson’s working against me.  Occasionally, rarely, I hear the encouraging snap of the cap’s seal.  Success!  But, most of the time, failing at the Feat of Strength, I hand the bottle to Polley who, without looking, using just her thumb and forefinger, twists off the cap in a nanosecond.  It’s emasculating….

Another Feat of Strength includes the administering of a pill one takes daily.  Each pill is nestled in its own pod, twelve pods to a cardboard square, and the contest begins when I have to push the pill from its pod through the foil in order to release the pill from the security of the pod.  The foil is made of some space age steroid-injected titanium that can resist five million pounds of pressure and was originally designed to coat the bank vault at Fort Knox.  Even when I am successful at mastering this Feat of Strength, ejecting the pill from its pod, the result is a launching of the pill as if it was propelled by a Saturn rocket, the pill bouncing on the kitchen floor, and ending up underneath a table or dishwasher overhang or, worst case scenario, the refrigerator.

Feats of Patience are also high on the measuring stick of frustration.  These tests of mental endurance go back, for me, to the 1980’s.

“The first commercial compact disc was produced on 17 August 1982. It was a recording from 1979 of Claudio Arrau performing Chopin waltzes (Philips 400 025-2). Arrau was invited to the Langenhagen plant to press the start button. The first popular music CD produced at the new factory was The Visitors (1981) by ABBA.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc

The compact disc was a wonderful invention.  Its packaging was not.  My first cd purchase (either Dynamite by the Four Tops or Mantovani Magic) involved a challenge.  I tried to pull the cd case open, without success, until I realized it was encapsulated in an almost invisible plastic that was so tightly wrapped no molecules could escape….and no slack was available for my fingers to grasp.  Even the tip of my scissors simply slid across the plastic.  I thought I might apply the flame of a blowtorch, but wary of consuming the disc in flames, I opted for a razor. This plastic taxes one’s patience because, once removed, it clings insidiously to skin. This kind of sinister plastic seeks revenge for its disturbance by grasping fingers, wrists, arms, and I am careful to keep it away from my face lest I risk suffocation.  Plastic wrapper removed I became excited about listening to either Good Lovin’s Aint Easy to Come By or Red Roses for a Blue Lady.  To my surprise, the case would still not open.  My patience is further tested by a strip of white plastic tape gripping both doors of the case, thus preventing the case from opening.  Out comes the razor again.  By the time I released the actual cd from its prison, I could have hummed all the songs on the album.  Months later, while purchasing another CD, I also bought a “CD Liberator,” basically a razor glued between two pieces of hard plastic.  Like many Feats of Patience, opening a cd case involves a certain amount of physical danger, what with scissors and razors.  And that thin, near invisible plastic that coats everything, from dvd cases to x-acto knives (I once almost severed a pinky using a dull x-acto knife to slice through the plastic wrapping a package of x-acto knives), to charcoal lighters to batteries.  In the fifties a popular game show was Beat the Clock hosted by Budd Collier.

“Okay.  Give me 60 seconds on the clock.  Unwrap the package of batteries in under sixty seconds and you win a month’s supply of Tide detergent.  Ready? Start the clock.”  I would lose every time.

I am challenged by another Feat of Patience when I visit the produce section of our local market.  Want to buy five Granny Smith apples?   I choose the best five from the pile of green apples.  Easy enough.  Then the test begins.  I have to rip off a plastic bag from the plastic bag provider.  Then I must pull apart the two sides of the bag so I can deposit the apples.  I honestly believe that someone has invented, patented, and manufactured a plastic magnet.  The two sides of the bag will not, WILL NOT, pull apart.  I turn the bag upside down, sideways, and hold it up to the florescent light, all to no avail.  By the time a freak anomaly of the universe occurs and an opening of the bag appears, my apples have soured.  I have certainly soured.

Apples are not the only food that recalls the Plastics Syndrome.  We invited family members down for a barbeque.  My task was to prepare and cook the whole chickens.  First I needed to extract the chicken from the tough plastic wrap.  On the plastic were directions on opening the package.  “Tear Here” followed by two hundred white arrows.  This is, obviously, one of those pranks developed by packaging agents.  I can see them on the assembling line, wrapping whole chickens in industrial strength plastic, chuckling as they applied the instructions on the label.  “Imagine when the buyer tears along the arrows and the package explodes and bloody chicken water sprays the kitchen!!!!  Ha! Ha! Ha!”  My kitchen scissors are not up to the challenge.  I rummage through our garage until I find a pair of clippers designed to cut through barbed wire in World War I trenches.  I start the cutting and, well…..three days later I found dried spots of bloody chicken water on the ceiling above the sink.

Electronic devices often present the most challenging Feats of Strength and Feats of Patience. I purchased a bonding device to glue together broken pieces of plastic objects that were lined up in my home awaiting repair.  I broke a pair of, admittedly cheap, scissors while cutting the tape that sealed the cardboard box which was filled with those plastic peanuts that protect objects from shipping mishaps.  Shipping mishaps?!  What with the box wrapped tightly with industrial strength masking tape and filled with three thousand plastic foam peanuts, I could place this container at ground zero for the detonation of a megaton thermonuclear device and bet on its being unscathed.   After throwing away the plastic foam peanuts (months later one found its way through my sandals and between my toes) I found another box inside the bigger box……inside this second box was a third, smaller box….the modern version of those Russian nesting eggs.  Finally, the retail box….tightly wrapped in that sinister invisible plastic. Using one of those x-actor knives that almost cost me a finger, I rip through that plastic, and while it gets its revenge by clinging to my thumbs, I begin to search the box for an opening.  I cannot find it.  I am inches of frustration away from going back to the store and asking its tech support crew if it can help me unleash my device, but the potential for humiliation is too great.  After a decade or so, I discover the devilish trick.  There IS a tab sealing the box opening, only the tab is not white or black or blue.  It is CLEAR!!!!!!  In a fit of rage, mimicking the deranged protagonist of Poe’s “Black Cat,” I slice the tab to shreds, open the box only to find the individual components of my bonder individually wrapped in plastic.  I wept.  Instead of using the bonder, I should have asked the packaging department to repair my household items that needed gluing.

I imagine that emergency rooms around the nation are maxed out with patients suffering from plastic cuts resulting from struggles with opening various cases, wrapping various objects and eating from various containers, all involving plastic.

Feats of Strength and Feats of Patience are all around us.  On a visit to my grandchildren I was asked to distribute one of those fruit juice boxes. They come in packs of six.  Again with the clingy plastic.  Then I have to summon my strength to pierce the juice box with a plastic straw.  QueeQueg, master harpooner on the Pequod, would be stymied by this Feat of Strength.  After jabbing at the fruit box a couple of hundred times, my granddaughter takes the box and straw and within seconds is sucking up the apple/mango/acai juice.  Humiliated once again, I decide, even though it is 11 AM, to take a nap.  My granddaughter looks up at me and smiles.  I place my hand on her shoulder and simply say,

“Plastics, Sweetpea.   Plastics.”