Packaging

I have discovered as I grow older that there are more and more things I can't seem to open properly or easily. Am I simply getting feeble or is packaging getting more 'person proof'?

I take a allergy pill once in a while. They come on a sheet in little bubbles. You tear one of the pills away from the sheet and it helpfully says on the back--"bend here and open". I dutifully bend down that corner and the corner breaks off, leaving me with no way to seperate the rest of the backing from the pill. I try to push the pill through the back and invariably break the pill without pushing it free. Recently I've been taking a pair of fingernail clippers and with three clips cut into the bubble where the broken pill is still encased. Then I use my teeth to bite the bubble and finally get the pill--in two or three pieces, free.

Lots of stuff comes with a foil covered piece of cardboard and a handy-dandy pull tag. I'm thinking of plastic quarts of milk and salad dressings in particular. After having cramped my hand to break the seal of the top of the salad dressing or using my teeth again to bite away the red top of the milk since the little 'pull' strip breaks off before freeing it, I clinch the pull tag between my thumb and index finger and it tears clear off the cover. I try to edge the cardboard off and break a nail and finally am reduced to taking a steak knife to cut through it and peal it away in tiny pieces.

Never mind anything that comes packaged inside a large plastic bubble. I go straight to a knife with that and usually slice a finger trying to cut through it so I can get to the shoe strings. Why on earth would shoestrings have to come in tamper proof packaging?

Recently someone gave me a CD of some gospel music. It took me a broken nail, an almost chipped tooth, a steak knife and my wife just to get the plastic wrap off the CD holder. Then I broke the hinges off that trying to open it and flipped the CD out onto the floor trying to prise it out of its holder. The music ewas good though....

Is this all because of that nut job who put poison in Advil years ago?

I appreciate being made safer--but what is a nut job going to put into a CD? Anthrax? Why--to wipe out fans of Lady Ga-Ga...? Well, that might not be a bad idea....

And cheese slices that come in zip lock bags. First I have to chew off the plastic down to the zip lock and then often I can't get that open without my faithful steak knife. I'm considering getting a little holder I can attach to my belt to carry a steak knife with me in case I have to open stuff.

If we can make packaging this effective, why can't we make batteries that never loose their charge (try to get AA's out of their package lately?) and cars that run on water? To much Research and Design genius has gone into perfecting packaging and not enough into how to cure cancer or repair the ozone layer, so far as I can tell.

Or maybe it's that the technology of secure packaging has been improved but the technology of "tear here" has been sorely neglected.

I'm just not sure anymore...But then, maybe it's just me....