On opening things

         

Last week, for the first time since last July, I quit the car and went into the grocery store.  To celebrate, I went to the dairy case and began putting pints of interesting ice cream into a shopping bag (it’s my job to carry in the shopping bags).

This is our whole food store, remember, and it is only great good fortune they devote a quarter of one side of a freezer column to ice cream.  I hoped to see a good chocolate and peanut butter go by, but I didn’t. The spoils were decent, however, and over the week Laura and I have indulged in my ice cream plunder. 

Today, for lunch, after I sent her off for a haircut, I took the last pint out of the freezer. Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. It had a plastic sealer around the lid that did not easily twist off, so I carried it intact to my desk, bypassing the kitchen trash.

Over the last decade, my hands have become increasingly useless. For a long time I squeezed a blue rubber ball to increase strength, but I have no idea where the cat last parked it. But be honest, I never really found a solution, and didn’t work hard at it.

First it was just hard to hold a pencil, turn it in my fingers, draw a line. I eased from cursive into printing, and then to printing block letters. Now I quite unapologetically use the keyboard, on the whole. 

I don’t bother much with knitting; since the bus accident a year and a half ago, my brain wanders away and my fingers don’t move fast. Weaving still works for me; my wrist is quite strong enough to send the shuttle through a shed. Now, my shoulder says “Enough” at the end of a bobbin. I’m taking care of that come Wednesday.

I have purchased most every aid known to augment hand strength. A gripper for lids was a wonderful find. The kitchen scissors get through most everything. But the plastic seal on my pint of ice cream obviously would need released by my razor sharp desk shears with the lethal point.

The deed done, I eased off the lid. That’s not easily done, either.  I set it on the desk, and uneasily eyed the ice cream. It neither looked nor smelled vanilla. Back to the front of the carton, I read “banana ice cream”. I ask you, who makes ice cream from bananas? They officially leave the food chain about age three, save possibly for boys. I don’t care if they are free trade bananas. That does not alter the taste.

Seeing chunks of black chocolate (I did not check its trade status) and walnuts (which I don’t particularly like), I tried a bite.  And a bite and a bite and a bite.  I gave it a quarter of an inch opinion test. I put back on the lid and returned it to the kitchen.

I bet the only reason I found it there is that Laura does not like it, either.

The haircut