Saturday 1 September 2012

A new Olympic sport

And that is (cue drumroll) opening modern packaging.

Not such a silly idea as it sounds. It often requires teeth, long nails (mine are short), several sizes of scissors, and a very great deal of patience. On the sporty side, it requires skill, dexterity, and lots and lots of practice.

The worst of all, in my experience, are electric toothbrushes. These come tightly encased in plastic which has the toughness of an elephant's hide combined with the recalcitrance of a driver wearing a hat (see previous post). It has been known for two of us, armed with an assortment of implements, to take the best part of twenty minutes even to touch the actual toothbrush, never mind extract it.

So. For the Olympic Package Opening, I suggest five electric toothbrushes, to be opened against the clock, without any tools, by competitors wearing fingerless leather mittens.

You read it first here.

13 comments:

  1. Look for the sticking plasters before you start the task.

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  2. There is a particular dog chew that I buy sometimes that has the " elephant hide" plastic tightly wrapped round it.......absolutely no way in with scissors or knife! I have to feel very brave to tackle it.

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  3. Replies
    1. Yes. But not in the Olympic event. That would be cheating.

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  4. You are absolutely spot on about the difficulty of opening packages these days, Frances. Some of the most ridiculous things we've experienced are clear elastoplasts which take so long to open, we might have bled to death!

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    1. Quite. And I've never seen the point of clear elastoplasts anyway. Are the for the very vain?

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  5. So funny, and so true Frances. Don't get me started on opening tins - the sardine and corned beef type ones. Oh dear.

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    1. Maggie, the solution to the corned beef problem is to use an oven glove. I used to cut myself every time, but no more!

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  6. I had a hell of a problem with cling film yesterday. It was ridiculous - its a bit of plastic for goodness sake.

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  7. Ah....clingfilm. A whole new ballgame...

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  8. I couldn't agree more except that there are more mundane things one has to open on a daily basis which are equally difficult. At least you are only likely to open an electric toothbrush once every 5 years or more. If you have more than one house or bathroom it might be more frequently of course.

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