On Christmas I was given a lovely bottle of blueberry syrup. My brother flew it from my parents’ place (I rarely check a bag, and as of this writing, the stupid ‘no-liquids-through-airport-security’ rule is still in effect), and eventually, after a several days, I was able to reunite with the victual.
But when I was finally ready to try it out — I believe I was hoping to add it to my porridge — I found that I couldn’t open it.
This didn’t seem like a huge problem at first. I mean, I often have trouble with pickle jars and the like, and there is usually a quick solution, weather its trying really hard and/or running the lid under hot water, or gripping with a rag.
But this was a different kind of cap. It was much smaller than the lid of a jar. I couldn’t properly wrap my hand around it, because it was too narrow, and I could only get a couple fingers on it, because it was too short. And my grip kept slipping, but the rag wasn’t helping. Because it was plastic, hot water wasn’t helping, and if I’d had plyers on hand, I don’t expect they would have helped.
It was at this point that it dawned on my that I might actually be incapable of removing this cap, and I started entertaining the ways I might have to safely break the (glass) bottle to get at its contents. This of course was far than ideal, or safe (nobody really wants shards of glass mixed in with their blueberry syrup), but what else was I going to do? How could they make the cap like this? There are a lot of people out there more feeble-handed than me, and I assume that many of them fall within the target market of this product. So how are their customers supposed to open the fucking bottle?
I still don’t know the answer to that. But I can tell you how I managed to open it.
As it turns out, I value rubber bands quite highly, and always like to have them on hand. You never know when they’re going to come in handy. Or maybe you do: Always.
And so this turned out to be one of those occassions, even if I wasn’t expecting it.
Because one of the things about rubber bands, is that they have a pretty good grip. And so by wrapping the rubber band around the cap of my blueberry syrup, I was able to both increase its girth and its friction coefficient. Which allowed me to grip the bottle more properly, and thus open the bottle. And apply the product to my porridge. (It was actually a little sweet, if you care. I used the syrup far more sparingly in future dealings).
And that’s how I opened a bottle of blueberry syrup with a rubber band.