Tuesday, 15 October 2002 | Can opener

On Sunday I noticed I was starting to get sick, so rather than going out with a friend from Raleigh who was in town, I remained at home, so that I could swallow pellets of vitamin C, drink tea, take a warm bath, and watch a movie. I patiently waited for the water spewing out of the bathtub faucet to get hot, timidly testing it with my hand so I wouldn't get burned. It never even got warm.

Desperately and wastefully, I began boiling pots of water on my gas stove, carrying them carefully toward the bath, dodging my cat, pouring their steaming contents into the suddenly large basin. One, two, three, four, and again. I must've combined twelve pots of boiling water with a few inches of cold I'd put in, but the cold just swallowed the hot like a light snack, destroying all evidence of my labor. I gave up and waited until the next day, when the hot water miraculously returned.

***

Monday was a holiday, which I spent underneath pounds of covers, reading, running errands. I took my first trip to the local laundromat, where I sat sniffling and reading 1984 and retracting my legs every few seconds to avoid tripping the screaming children running around a block of washing machines.

A few minutes before I was about to leave, a pudgy young girl came up to me and asked whether I could change her dollar into quarters. I could and did, and she disappeared. A moment later, she returned and told me that the machine had eaten her quarter. "That's too bad," I said, as I folded the last of my hot clothes. On my way out the door, she caught me again and boldly asked me whether I could give her the money the machine had taken from her. (I refused.)

***

I'd already chopped the garlic, green onions, and carrots for soup when I noticed that I don't own a can opener. I grabbed my keys and my bag and ran across the street to the VGF Town, a long and narrow shop that dangles orange, curly fly-paper in ribbons above the fruit. No can opener. A block away at another store, I bought the last available tool that called itself a "can opener," though I'd never seen anything like it. How hard can it be to operate?

Once at home, I tried every conceivable angle at least twice, called my mom in vain, and considered puncturing the bloody can with a sharp knife. Instead, I knocked on the door to the nearest apartment, with my can and opener in hand. "Hi, sorry to bother you, but do you know how to open this can using this thing?" He laughed heartily for a rather small guy, and just let me use his conventional opener. "Have you ever seen one of these before?" I asked. He explained that he had, but that they were only to be used in times of crisis.

I still don't know how to use it. Incidentally, tonight I unintentionally bent and broke my cheap wine opener (and broke the cork in half as well). Although I will admit to not being especially mechanically inclined, I swear it isn't me this time.