MAYBE the madness began with strapping tape. Its invention seemed to excite people, so that packages arrived more and more impenetrably wrapped, in layer upon layer of the tough, string-reinforced stuff. Where tearing fingers used to do the job, an X-Acto knife and a surgical precision had to be mustered. Domestic injuries mounted, but the tape kept coming, along with flesh-colored plastic tape that wouldn’t tear—just stretched, like tortured flesh—no matter how hard you pulled.
Then one day, in the long twilight of the Reagan presidency, the cereal and sugar boxes that had always said “Press Here” ceased to yield, when pressed, the little pouring holes we remembered from childhood. Rather, our thumbnails broke, and turned purple overnight. Padded book envelopes, which used to open with an easy tug on the stapled turned-over flap, were now taped over the staples. The taping was tenacious, multilayered. Postal regulations, some said: too many clerks were calling in sick after cutaneous contact with half-bent staple ends. Sometime under Bush, with everybody distracted by televised bulletins from the Gulf War, the self-sealing book envelope was promulgated. Now there was no hope of a tidy opening and a thrifty reuse; nothing less than a hatchet or a machete would free the contents, in a cloud of fast-spreading gray fluff.
All this time, childproof pill bottles had been imperceptibly toughening and complicating, to the point where only children had the patience and eyesight to open them. Though the two arrows were lined up under a magnifying glass and superhuman manual force was exerted, the top declined to pop off. Similarly, the screw-tops on the can of creosote and the bottle of Liquid-Plumr refused to slip into the grooves that in theory would lift them up—up and free. Instead, they rotated aimlessly no matter how much simultaneously downward and sideways, or semicircular, pressure was applied. Occasionally, an isolated householder did enjoy a moment of success with these recalcitrant containers; manufacturers, swiftly striking back, printed the instructions in even smaller type or, less readably yet, in raised plastic letters. The corporations, it seemed, did not want their products released into use—any upsurge in demand might interfere with their lucrative downsizing programs.
The little bags of peanuts with which the downsizing airlines had replaced in-flight meals became, as the Clinton administration warily settled into the seats of power, impossible to open. The minuscule notch lettered “Tear Here” was a ruse; in truth, the plastic-backed tinfoil, or tinfoil-backed plastic, had been reinforced in that very place. Mounting frustration, intensified by the normal claustrophobia, cramping, and fright of air travel, produced dozens of cases of apoplexy and literally thousands of convulsively spilled peanuts. Even the little transparent sacs of plastic cutlery for airplane meals (when these were actually served) proved seamlessly resistant, and yielded up their treasure only when pierced from within by a painstakingly manipulated fork.
Such consumer-resistant packaging devices were all as bows and arrows before the invention of gunpowder, however, once the maker of Vanish, a brand of mysterious crystals alleged to be able to clean toilet bowls, came up with a red child-resistant cap, shaped like a barred “O,” a three-dimensional “
,” whose accompanying arc-shaped directions read, “To open: Squeeze center while pulling up.” Well, good luck, Mr. and Mrs. America: squeeze until your face turns red, white, and blue. No amount of aerobic finger exercise will ever pack in the squeeze power needed to release those crystals into that murky toilet bowl.
Either as a nation we have grown feeble or the policy of containment, once preached as the only safe tactic for dealing with the Communist menace, has now refocused upon the output of capitalism, in all its sparkling, poisonous, hazardous variety. They—the corporate powers that control our lives—have apparently decided, in regard to one product after another, to make it, advertise it, ship it, but not let us into it. Be it aspirin, creosote, salted peanuts, or Vanish, it is too wonderful for us—too potent, too fine. We rub the lamp, but no genie is released. We live surrounded by magic caskets that keep their tangy goodness sealed forever in.
1996