Me and plastic bags: a column

A Column by John Estridge

There are many ways I embarrass my Long Suffering Wife Ruth, but one of the worst for her is my inability to open those plastic sleeve-like bags in the vegetable and fruit area of a grocery store.

And I know I have spoken about this ad nauseum in my columns, but I have absolutely no common sense. It is hard for me to figure out the simplest of things. I get frustrated, and I just give up.

However, with the plastic sleeve-like bags, I probably futilely attempt to make it a useable item too many times with every time I tear off a plastic sleeve-like bag. I have seen quite a few people stop their busy movements at crowded grocery stores and watch my little melodrama.

First, it is hard for me to figure out which way is up, or another way to put it, which end is the end to futilely attempt to open.

After turning it over, end over end, several times, I am usually able to discern the upside, which leads to the downside. Then, the grueling part begins. I could use the excuse of the Events I Am No Longer Allowed To Talk About But Always Do (EIANLATTABAD): The three strokes in the early morning hours of Jan. 25, 2008, really negatively affected my finger dexterity Honestly, I did not have much finger dexterity to begin with.

Back in 1977, I believe electricity had just been put into use, I was an assembler at D&M in Richmond. We made dishwashers. After working on the assembly line for what seemed to be about 12 years but if I remember right was a few months, I was able to work at a subassembly table. This was really great because there were just five people working around a little table. We were able to have conversations and discussions and more importantly gossip.

There were many reasons to gossip at D&M in Richmond because it was like a big high school populated by people who looked as if they were going and coming from rock concerts, if you know what I mean. That factory was all about sex, drugs and rock and roll. The latter one of those came through transistor radios (remember those) people had around at their workstations, and they were all tuned to WEBN.

The first two things were everywhere and happened all the time. It was truly a wild place to work. Note: We did not do any of those three things at our table. And everyone got along well. It was fun to go to work.

At the subassembly table, we made timers for the dishwasher. So, if anyone is still alive who purchased a Sears dishwasher in 1977 or 1978, and the timer malfunctioned, my apologies. I am sure it was not due to the failure of the other four people, which leaves just me to blame. Again, my apologies.

What appeared to be the easiest job was attaching short, color-coded wires to the timer. Ladies at the various tables did it, and they were able to get boxes ahead so when we changed over from one timer to another, they were already ahead. They could stay ahead and quit long before we, the others at the table, were finished. We had a quota and did not get paid extra to do more.

So, I asked one day to do that.

It was a big mistake.

One had to grasp the metal ends of the wires and attach them to this male end of the timer. There were several wires per timer. It looked really easy, except it was not when someone did not have finger dexterity and/or common sense. Joyce Kays, who worked at my table and usually wired the timers, took pity on me and helped while doing her own job more than adequately well before I just gave up altogether.

One of my male friends at the factory told me I was just inexperienced at it and to try again. That was even a larger mistake as it ended with similar results. Those at the table were unanimous that I never try that again. And I did not ever try it again.

So, I stand near tomatoes or cucumbers arranged in colorful displays amid misting moments and attempt to separate the plastic ends of the sleeve-like plastic bag to no avail. Eventually, I carry it over to Ruth to do. Usually, by that time, she has stopped what she is doing and is watching me and feeling, I’m sure, greatly embarrassed by the audience that is also watching me. And she will have it open in less than a blink of an eye. Then, she hands it back to me to fill with whatever vegetable I or we were wanting.

I was thinking about the grocery store scenario the other day at Cedar Point amusement park – I don’t think things like that are called amusement parks anymore – and I was trying to open a cheap plastic poncho.

Every year I take two teenage grandchildren and one almost teenager to an area amusement park, even though they don’t call them that anymore. The first year was Holiday World, which I still call Santa Claus Land. Last year was King’s Island. This year was Cedar Point. Prior to the (EIANLATTABAD), I was a roller coaster enthusiast. Prior to children, my ex-wife and I traveled to different amusement parks (even though they don’t call them that anymore) and rode roller coasters. At Cedar Point, we sprinted from roller coaster to roller coaster, except when I paused to drink a beer.

At King’s Island, where my ex and I had season passes, we just rode the Beast. I still dream about the Beast.

Now, however, I sit somewhere – usually with other elderly people – ostensibly read my Kindle, but I just people watch. And, wow, there are a lot of different people, dramas, people, dramas to watch.

Tuesday, the day in question, the kids and my daughter Katie, who really does all the work with the kids, rode 15 roller coasters (some more than once). We walked 9.2 miles. I hope to be able to walk again. And I’m not kidding. It is too painful to kid about.

One reason they were able to ride so many roller coasters is it periodically monsooned. I would say rain, but rain is inadequate for what it did. It monsooned several times. That amount of rain further thinned an already thin crowd.

When the first monsoon hit, I was sitting outside Steel Magnum or something like that. It was a nice bench-like chair and nearby very small trees would have given some, but inadequate shade had there been sunlight. I had a direct line of sight to both the roller coaster with its screaming participants as well as the entry area. Entry areas to roller coasters are always fascinating for me because the young person guarding the entry gets to tell sometimes very rich and otherwise entitled people, they cannot carry things like fanny packs onto the rides. Usually, the rich, otherwise entitled people, try to explain their fanny packs and they, themselves, are different from the other not entitled people and their cheaper, less desirable fanny packs.

The kids guarding the entry have none of it, turn them around, point them to lockers and then have a good laugh about it once their entitled backs are turned.

I was doing this when the first monsoon hit. There was a scattering of drops where myself and the other old people around me held our hands palm up like we could not believe what the weather people had predicted had come true. Abruptly, the monsoon hit.

As an elderly person sitting while everyone else rode the coaster, I was the keeper of everything, which was spread in an unorderly fashion around me. I remained calm, took out my cheap, plastic poncho package I had in my hoodie pocket.

I was inwardly very happy when I was able to open the small package holding the cheap, plastic poncho in about five minutes, which was very good time for me. I then had a larger sleeve-like plastic bag. Ruth was about four and a half hours away in Brookville. She does not do amusement parks, even though they don’t call them that anymore. So, the option of carrying the cheap, plastic poncho over to her was out of the question.

I told myself to concentrate and gave myself silent pep talks telling myself I could do this. “It is simple” I kept telling myself like it was a mantra.

But I could not.

I thought finding the top, which would lead me to the bottom, would be easy, as it had a hood.

But it was not.

I thought the arm holes were the hood several times. I have no idea how much time elapsed. To me, it seemed like about a decade. I then looked up and the beforementioned lockers were beneath a tent-like structure and about 500 people were crowded among the lockers with nothing else to do but watch the fat, old, bald guy try to open a cheap, plastic poncho in the middle of a monsoon.

Also, I really needed windshield wipers for my glasses and the cheap, plastic poncho was getting really slick.

Eventually, I found the hood. That meant I knew which end to futilely try to open. However, when I was turning it over, I again lost where exactly the hood and the end I needed were and again found an arm hole instead.

I thought about just giving up and carrying my two armfuls of stuff over to the locker tent and wedging myself among the audience members. But I did not because I did not want to have to go there in failure. And if I did, I would be able to hear their laughter and snide remarks. Being deaf has its advantages at times.

Finally, I found the correct end to try to open. Remember, it was slick, and I was under pressure not only from the large audience, but the intensity of the rain had increased if that was possible. I thought about that scene in Forrest Gump where he is in Vietnam, and it starts to rain and continues to rain for months, and he describes the various types of hard rain.

Another decade or two went by before I actually got the ends apart and started to put the cheap, plastic poncho over my head. First, I confused one of those stupid arm holes as the hood yet again and tried to wedge my head through it. However, doing this, I discovered I had forgotten I had an IU baseball hat on and the hood part, let alone the armhole part, would not fit over my hat. But it did knock my hat off, which fell into a six-inch or so deep, raging river running over and around my tennis shoes. (Do they still call them tennis shoes?)

Thus, I had to catch my rapidly disappearing hat, that probably was heading to Lake Erie, which surrounds Cedar Point on three sides, which is why the Point is in the name.

That caused me to knock my daughter’s unentitled fanny pack, into the rushing river, and I did not realize it at the time.

With hat in hand to add to the other stuff, I again started to find the hood part, and I accomplished that feat, finally. I pulled the cheap, plastic poncho over my soaked head. I actually did a little victory dance or whatever a fat, old, bald guy can do who has experienced (EIANLATTABAD).

At that point, I looked up and discovered my audience had grown over at the locker area. There was actually a scattering of applause. It was then I saw the miniscule tent over the roller coaster entryway and went over to it rather than join the larger audience. A man a few years younger than myself but just as fat as myself then told me the thing we were standing under was permeable. I guess since I had done my very public demonstration, the man thought he should tell me the definition of permeable.

I just let that pass and nodded my head, which was encompassed by a cheap, plastic poncho hood, with my equally soaked IU hat on top of the hood, and I was trying to see through hopelessly fogged up, rain-streaked glasses.

Then, a young woman somewhere between 16 and 40 handed me Katie’s fanny pack. She had snatched it out of the rushing river before it could go into Lake Erie. She smiled and giggled a little.

As she did that, the rain quit as abruptly as it started. My cheap, plastic poncho had been on maybe a minute.

I left my poncho on the rest of the day. While it did monsoon at times, the sun also found its way out and overheated the pavement, but I refused to take the cheap, plastic poncho off again as I did not ever want to go through putting it back on again.

Katie did talk me into taking it off before we got in our van at the end of the 9.2-mile day or I might be wearing it still.