As you might expect from women of a certain age, my friends and I have been talking a lot about Capri Sun late

Although I can’t recall why, I’m the person who first introduced the subject into conversation. For some reason, I felt the need to tell my pals that I never mastered the fine art of opening pouches of Capri Sun.

Indeed, if not for my best friend, I would have died of thirst during my grade school years. You see, she stuck the straw into the pouch for me because no matter how hard I tried, I could not puncture that gosh-dern pouch. I’m not sure what I did for refreshment on days when she was absent from school. I guess I lapsed into dehydration.

Anyway, if I expected my friends to make sport of my failure, I was surprised. They never mastered the fine art of (correctly) opening a Capri Sun, either. One shared that her attempts result in the straw puncturing both sides of the pouch. Another said that when she does manage to open a Capri Sun, the juice squirts everywhere.

Feeling vindicated, I also shared with one friend that I struggle to use can openers. That’s why I am in favor of legislation requiring all cans to feature pull tabs. This friend said she could use manual openers but not the electric kind. That reminded me of a grudge I’ve nursed for decades.

I will not name names (in print), but dozens of years ago, I packed some sort of canned food for lunch. In the breakroom, my coworkers directed me to an electric contraption they called a can opener. I had never seen anything like that. It looked like something out of The Jetsons. I couldn’t figure out where to put the can or how to turn on the gosh-darn thing.  

My coworkers laughed and laughed and joked that my mommy must have always opened cans for me. Actually, it was my job to retrieve cans from the lazy Susan and open them with the can opener that doubled as the bottle opener or the can opener with two little rotating wheels. Not that I ever became proficient at using the openers, but I performed the task capably enough. I still do.

Anyway, my friend also said that she cannot open small cartons of milk. Oh, I can do that with ease. Not that I drink milk from a carton. Once, during my aforementioned grade school days, I drank milk from a carton. I did not like the taste and dozens of years later, I still refuse to entertain the notion of drinking milk from a carton.

Yes, I can even hold a grudge against cartons of milk.

This post originally appeared in the Appalachian News-Express.

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