Opening A Bottle While Old
It’s like rubbing your stomach and patting your head while dancing backwards in heels.
The directions on the nasal spray were simple: “Press in on the two white grips, then squeeze, push down firmly and turn cap counterclockwise.”
OK, then.
The neck of the bottle is about 3/4-inch in diameter and the grips are each about 1/4-inch wide, so this is like squeezing a hummingbird, which sounds really mean, but it fit what was beginning to feel like an evil pattern. It takes two fingers of one hand to push in on the grips and three or four more fingers on the other hand to push down on the cap.
One hand is pushing in, one is pushing down and turning. It’s like rubbing your stomach and patting your head while dancing backwards in heels.
Plus, I’d already had to use a letter opener to pry off the plastic that initially encased the entire bottle. This all seemed a lot of stress to put on a person who already had a sinus headache—which might have been caused partially by stress.
I have never had much strength in my hands and all that typing over the years hasn’t done anything to improve that. Wrestling with this nasty, miserable, stupid, annoying, devilish bottle was making my headache worse. And the lid wasn't budging.
I couldn't get the inward squeeze to match the downward push. This sounds vaguely erotic, and maybe the bottle was enjoying it, but I wasn’t.
I gave it to Joe, a woodworker who not only can comprehend directions, but usually has the dexterity to pull off something like this. He is, in most cases, chief cook and bottle opener at our house. He tried for about ten minutes, took a break, then tried again. Even he was stymied. I was about to go back to the drugstore and tell them to open this tiny monster their own damn selves when he said, “I got it!”
“So, did you try a different approach, or did you just luck out?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” he said. “Something just worked.” He eagerly handed the bottle back to me.
And so I was ready to irrigate my nasals. But first, I had to read the rest of the instructions and remember to hold my head just right while I sprayed, so the medicine would go into my sinuses and not just into my nose.
Part of this is likely a safety issue, but I could hear the faint echo of the designer’s dastardly laugh as he imagined a little old lady in Iowa trying to open his most clever of all cleverness. Bwahahahahaha.
Still, my head feels better, and I think I got through the entire thing without cursing, although I wouldn't swear to that.
If Joe ends up going to the great pie in the sky before me, I imagine myself roaming the halls, knocking on neighbors’ doors, asking like a Darwinian orphan, “Please, sir, would you open my bottle?”
I am going to write the manufacturer and complain, partly out of frustration but also out of curiosity of how they might respond. I expect the response will be as satisfying as those I get when I write to an elected official. Plus, I’ll probably get a coupon for my next purchase of this hellish contraption.
