The Old Coot is in a blizzard.
By Merlin Lessler
I recently ordered a bookcase online. I couldn’t
find what I wanted in local stores, as often happens, so I was forced to go to
the Internet. The bookcase came in a large, heavy box. The shelves and other
components were nestled in Styrofoam. Long sheets, short sheets, half inch wide
sheets, skinny sheets, floppy sheets, peanuts. I got the components unpacked
and into a disorganized pile. Then, I dealt with the Styrofoam nightmare. I cut
it up to fit in the recycle bin or the garbage can. I’m never sure which it
should go in. Recycle rules are too complicated for me, so I decide by flipping
a coin. Garbage always wins.
Anyhow, I started breaking it down. I used scissors,
a small saw and my hands, tied it up with twine, now ready for disposal, from my
house to the dump, to live there forever. But that wasn’t the end of the nuisance.
All these little bits and pieces of Styrofoam surrounded me in a blizzard. It
stuck to me and everything around me. I tried sucking up the mess with a shop
vac, but it’s never that simple. Some of those particles hung around for weeks.
My next step was to put the bookcase together with
only a very limited instruction manual. Still, that issue was a cinch compared
to dealing with the packing material. The only tool required was an Allen
wrench which came in the box with a bunch of fasteners, unfamiliar to me. I was
used to using nails, screws and glue, not these things. But, I got it together
and wondered how the packaging world became so cruel, forcing us to live with Styrofoam
nightmares.
There weren’t many packages coming and going in most
of my world. I still remember the box of chocolate chip cookies my mother sent
me when I was at Camp Arrow. I was a 12 year-old, away from home for the first
time. I wasn’t homesick, but it was the first and still is the best package I
ever received. It was rare to mail or to receive a package back then.
Everything we bought was local. If we couldn’t find it, we didn’t get it.
When we sent
a package, we used wadded up newspaper
to pack things in. That’s hard to do today; most of us don’t buy an actual newspaper
and don’t have a stack of them on stand-by. That wonderful packing (and window
washing) material is gone. I remember getting some packages in the 60s with
items nestled in popcorn that was sprayed with a blue dye and came with a
warning to not eat it. Some things came packed in straw, but most items were
nestled in some form of paper product.
The world changed and the people in charge weren’t paying
attention. So we now live with a Styrofoam nightmare. I’ve adjusted to the snow
storms. But I don’t like it. Do you?
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