Open here...if only! - Mariana

Open here...if only!

One should not swear, especially in front of little children.....

But before you’ve been caught alone at home, on the stormiest day imaginable, with a sick child and a shiny bottle of pink medicine that you just cannot open you should not judge. 

Of course it starts innocently enough: you give the cap the customary little twist and it doesn’t budge.  OK, those of us who’ve been here often enough should have a mental red flag up by now, but we’re all optimists aren’t we?  So we give it that second little twist...and a third.... and then a really violent semi-desperate one....and then another....until our hand is smarting and red and we have to stop for a minute just to soothe, kiss and pity it.  

It is just about now that we realise that a mere twist won’t do it.  We try the light tapping on any surface that presents itself. This must be something which Great-Grandma taught Grandma, and she Mum. In her turn, Mum taught us the "trick" too - but none of us ever opened a damned bottle thanks to the "little bit of air that goes in when you tap"! When you tap ghajnek, Buznann!  

Ah yes, the swearing has to start somewhere around now so we aim our insults at the family tree whilst trying to open the darned thing with a towel round the cap, like Dad says.  Maybe a different towel?  No...towels won’t do of course. They’re slippery.  A dish cloth it is then?  No, not the dish cloth either.

OK, how about we try the little brother thing of heating the bottle just a little in order for I-don’t-know-which-theory-of-expansion to do its magic? Magic, my foot - no success!

When we've tried everything, but everything we can think of, short of drilling a hole in the flaming bottle itself we know we've been beaten at the game. In my case, I finally call Dad.  

The great thing is that Dad's got a cold too and is stuck at home on sick leave.  His answer to my plea: Ipprova aghmel xugaman ma l-ghatu. I am never rude to my dad, which is why I don’t tell him explicitly where to shove the xugaman. Instead I put up with some more instructions, hold the phone to my ear against my shoulder, and do some further moves on the blighted bottle.  After half an hour of straining and heaving we’ve been through the whole, damned Kama Sutra and he finally suggests I go to the neighbours for help. Not quite my thing, thank-you!

There’s nothing to it but the last resort: I dress little one really warmly (which means he ends up looking like a big ball of wool with two startled eyes peeping out), grab the offending bottle, and drive to Dad’s house.  He’s waiting at the door with a handkerchief over his nose ("Thou shalt not transfer cold bugs to daughter who has little kids").  

Anyway, I get out of the car - my hands still smarting - and hand him the offending bottle, launching into a tirade against manufacturers who can’t keep in minds that mostly it's puny women administering medicines and opening bottles of this miserable ilk. Why is it that they can find a way to put a man on the Moon but not make easy-snap sealed caps?

My Dad looks at the bottle, twists the cap gently and hands it back shaking his head.  I'm almost beyond words - but only just. This proves nothing! He is not a puny woman! Where is women’s lib if they can’t even make bottles that we women can open?  If we can’t even medicate our kids without a man in the immediate vicinity, how can we take up things like ..... I don’t know.......becoming professional, secret alcoholics, for example, when we can’t even open a cap on our own?

The only thing to come out of this bottle business is that it has taught us to swear like men - or worse. So don’t judge when you hear us at it: it's one of the very few actual liberties women’s lib has granted us... 

...and God help all children within ear-shot!