Get a Grip

Last week gravity got all the credit. This week I’d like to introduce its accomplice: my right hand.

It started with the Italian lemonade. If you shop at Costco, you know the one. Heavy green glass bottle, best lemonade anywhere, and I’d just bought it. After filling four squeeze bottles with juice, I was holding the lemonade one second and standing in a sea of green glass and lemonade the next, afraid to move.

My hand struck again in the laundry room. I’d poured liquid detergent into the dispenser cup when half of it went straight to the tile floor.

Have you ever tried cleaning up laundry detergent? Paper towels spread it around. Water turns it into a bubble bath. I finally hauled out the steamer, because the only thing worse than spilling detergent would be slipping in it and becoming Gravity, Part Two. 

I have become an expert in cleaning tile floors. 

Then came the camera lens. An expensive one that slipped right out of my hand. Lemonade costs a few dollars to replace. A camera lens requires a dip into savings.

Dog kibble has hit the floor too. Gabby is delighted. She now follows me to the pantry like I’m the ice cream truck.

I’ve started adjusting. My drinking glasses are now nice plastic ones. They look like glass but don’t shatter when dropped. My insulated coffee tumblers have handles. I take my coffee seriously, and I’m not losing a drop.

Some mornings both hands wake up numb, apparently exhausted from the day before. They eventually come around, usually after I’ve needed them to open the coffee.

Then there was the morning I dropped my anxiety medication. I fill my prescriptions eight weeks at a time, so this was two months of calm rolling under the cabinets and toward the dog. I retrieved every last pill. Getting back up was another matter. By the time I made it to my feet, I was ready to take one.

But the real humiliation has been the jars.

For years, I was the neighborhood jar opener. My neighbor would call, and I’d walk over, twist the lid, grunt a little, and hand it back open. I remember walking home once, thinking how sad it must be when your hands can’t open a jar.

Turns out it’s contagious.

Now I tap the lid on the counter, run it under hot water, wrap it in a dish towel, and say a few words my mother would not have approved of. The lid remains unmoved. Did I mention glass jars can break?

Then I stand in my kitchen wondering whom I can call. Unfortunately, the neighborhood jar opener lives at my address.

So, I bought a deluxe lid opener with multiple sizes. I can now open everything from a bottle of lemon juice to a gallon jar of dill pickles.

Water bottles are another battle, particularly glass ones with screw tops. Recently, I wrestled with one until a neighbor strolled by. I handed it to him, expecting a quick twist and a little embarrassment.

He couldn’t open it either.

I have never been so relieved to see a grown man defeated by a bottle of water. For once, the problem wasn’t me. It was clearly defective packaging.

And not to discriminate against jars, am I the only one who can’t open a self-sealing bag? I usually give up, get a pair of scissors, and seal it with a paper clip I dropped on the floor. 

People have told me to get a grip my whole life. I always took it as advice about my attitude. It turns out it was a prophecy.