Bottle Cap Boondoggle

Have you ever done something so many times you can do it without thinking? Repetition over time has cause some movement to become almost second nature. For some reason this familiarity makes it just that much more annoying when you meet resistance during an activity and have to stop and think about what you are doing. For example, say you drive to work the back roads specifically to avoid traffic. You've been going this way for so long you don't even have to think about it anymore. Then one day everyone decides to take your route and causes a five minute delay. Suddenly, you're getting much more angry looking for an alternate street to take than you would if you were on the highway every morning going nowhere like everyone else. In actuality, you're really more angry about having to think than you are about the actual delay. Well, that same principle can be applied to a lot of smaller tasks as well.

The other afternoon I went to open a bottle of soda - something I have done hundreds, if not thousands, of times in my life. Only this time for some reason the bottle would not open. I tugged. I pulled. I tried using an a towel between my hand and the cap for increased grip. I held the bottle between my legs and hoped the extra leverage would help, but nothing I did made a dent. I tried to get this stupid bottle open for so long the space on my hand between my thumb and index finger was literally red from edges of the cap digging into my skin. (The next day revealed a lovely set of bruises on the inside of my palm.) Still, the damn thing would not open and you have no idea how much it was annoying me.

There is no reason I should have had this much trouble opening a stupid bottle of Diet Pepsi. Now, I know I haven't been lifting nearly as many weights as I should have been over the last few years, but I didn't think I was getting this weak. And, in my defense, I no longer need to be able to bench heavy objects. I have discovered that these days you can rent machines which will do most of the heavy lifting for you. That being said, I sincerely hope I'm not already reaching the point where I need to call for assistance to get a bottle open. I'm supposed to be the jar opener, not the guy who asks someone else to open the jar for them. A closer examination revealed that the cap was on extremely tight and the bottle had no give to it. It appeared to be pressure-packed making me think it had been dropped somewhere along the way.

While that made me feel better about my inability to get the bottle open, I now had a whole new set of problems to worry about, namely this thing exploding all over my kitchen once I finally did get the top off. (Not to mention I still had to figure out just how to do that part.) I ended up having to grab a pair of pliers to twist the top off. For safety's sake I did it over the sink, with all the care of a bomb-tech, fully convinced this bottle was going to explode. Well it didn't, which made me feel all the weaker. To be honest, I was kind of hoping for an explosion. It was the same feeling you get when you call an IT guy to look at your computer - you almost want the machine to be seriously broken because that way your call was justified. Instead I'm left feeling like I am one step closer to having to buy my spaghetti sauce in cans instead of jars.