One or more of my siblings and I share an unusual trait: We cannot properly open bags of food.

Upon reading these words, our mom is probably shaking her head as she recalls the countless potato chips and cookies that we flung onto cabinets, tables, and the floor due to this deficiency. And that’s not even taking into account all the potato chips and cookies that went stale because the improperly-opened bags could not be properly closed.

Mom is probably also thinking that I could mention that one or more of her children also don’t know how to properly open envelopes, but that’s another matter for another day.

Anyway, I was reminded of our inability to properly open bags again this week when I improperly opened a bag of oyster crackers. Thanks to my ninja-adjacent reflexes, I was able to keep the crackers from being flung onto the cabinet, table, and floor.

The bag was split only a quarter of the way open, but my attempts to stabilize the situation resulted in the split reaching halfway down the bag.

To my defense, the generic brand of crackers had been packaged in a flimsy bag.

I can see my mom shaking her head as she thinks to herself, “Sure, blame the bag,” and adding that if I wasn’t so cheap and had sprung for the brand name then maybe I would have been opening a higher quality of bag.

Regardless, I had to take action to save the crackers from going stale in a flimsy, half-torn bag.

So, I tried to wrap a twist tie around the top of the bag. But seeing how the top was split open, that didn’t work. I then retrieved a chip clip, aka a clothespin, but there wasn’t much to close.

I considered storing the crackers in Ziploc plastic bags. Not that I spring for the brand name, but you get the drift. But I didn’t want to waste bags, and this was definitely a multi-bag job.

Next, I looked in the pantry cabinets. In the bottom drawer, I found a container that had once held lemonade mix. And not just any mix. It had held Country Time mix, so you know the container is top quality.

Most of the crackers fit into the container and I was able to salvage enough of the flimsy bag to hold the remaining crackers. And I must say that, with its easy to open lid, a former lemonade mix container makes a perfect current cracker container. And it can be properly opened by one or more of my siblings and me.

This post originally appeared in the Appalachian News-Express.

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