Celebrating Life's Little Discoveries

Being a person of no great skill or significance, I tend to commemorate the times when I do really, really good on tasks of the everyday and mundane sort.

Today, I mastered our "fancy" can opener.

We have one of those really cheap, $0.99 opener made all of metal where the grooves that move the opener along the can sometimes gets stuck and can no longer rotate around the can, leaving you to perforate an opening, and creating lots of sharp edges and a ninja circle of death with the lid.

That's the one I usually wind up using, even though we have an opener of these varietes:
You know, the one with the innovative German engineering that leaves no sharp edges, the lid stays on the outside of the can, and no actual part of the can will actually touch the food you're trying to access inside. Oh, let's not forget the comfort handles and crank that won't leave a blister-looking mark on your thumbs as you try to turn the old skool opener around the can.

The only reason I never used that one was simple. I didn't know how to use it.

In all the years I've devoted to opening cans and cans of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, I had mastered every trick with the doom opener, and when something comes along and tries to make my life a little easier, it just does not compute. In essence, I really did not understand how to orient and work the thing. It was frustrating, because each time (and I'd usually be hungry at that point) I'd take another go at it, I felt like a dumb animal who hasn't learned her lesson and just waste my time from canned food goodness.

I don't understand. There are other can openers of similar design that I've used that I have no problem using. Even though I have another opener at my disposal, I was still stubbornly determined to master using that can opener. I didn't want some silly frilly gadget to get the best of me!

Then it finally came to me, in the form of using a vintage, electric can opener. I was at work rummaging through the kitchen gadget drawer when my boss' housekeeper told me the opener was in the washing machine. As I looked at my can o' beans with sadness, she began to set up the old can opener that they had on the counter I just thought was for display, but apparently still worked. As she loaded it, I realized that I was supposed to orient the "gripping" part of the opener horizontally rather than vertically, and spin it around!

So next time I was home, I did just that...and it worked! Kind of. Only, It looked as though the blade cut the middle of the lip of the lid, but I couldn't remove it, as if the blade didn't cut all the way through. IT WAS BROKEN! So I took the old opener out and started using that one when the lid just popped off. Okay, just DYSFUNCTIONAL!

And then I realized that's what those squid beak-looking clamps off to the side were for. I always wondered if it was some strange, foreign use of a can opener, but it really was just the little part you use to grab a hold of the lid and pull it from the can.


Of course, looking at images like this one could have helped.

To commemorate my sudden discovery, I didn't open one, but TWO cans today, one in the morning with no problem, and one tonight with finesse!

Oh, I like the good days when I feel like I'm kinda smart. Maybe now I can feel like I have a viable reason for reproducing: I'm not completely dumb...