Speak softly and carry a can opener

You shouldn’t need the arm strength of a gorilla to open a can of tuna.

We live in a country where marketers insist opening cans is easy. And it is easy, if you define hard as easy.

Maybe the American packaging industry wants to suss out foreign spies who grew up with jars. On my part, I’m just about ready to donate my cans to the local ballpark so I can see flying fish.

Right now, the only thing I can see is a metal cylinder I’ve kicked around my kitchen. My walls have dents in them, but as far as I know, the fish are okay.

If I took a jackhammer to the can, the fish would probably survive that, too.

Perhaps it’s a matter of authority. I’ve never had what you might call a stage presence.

When I did theater in the fourth grade, I played the narrator. No kidding. My teacher eventually took me aside and suggested that I had a good face for radio.

So I tried radio and was told I had a great voice for newspapers. Now I’m here and I can’t go any lower on the food chain.

My dad has a stage presence. He can pop open cans in a flash. He doesn’t even need to touch them. All it takes is a glance, and snap! The tuna leaps out of the can and arranges itself into a salad, complete with a parsley garnish.

My brother can do the same thing. Whatever this genetic talent is, I guess I didn’t inherit it.

My brother suggested I take up meditation, the theory being that if you can’t open a can of tuna with your hands, you might as well open it with your mind.

The principle is that you close your eyes, take a deep breath, and incinerate everything around you with a concentrated burst of hatred.

No, sorry! The idea is that you sit and huff for a few minutes, enough to realize that of all things, you’re angry at a can of tuna.

There are so many things that deserve your anger, like animal cruelty, the darkness of the human spirit, and public restrooms where the doors don’t lock.

So you meditate, and you realize that you’ve been pretty silly, losing your temper at canned fish. Then you laugh a healthy, carefree laugh, and smile at the can of tuna, and start revving your chainsaw.

Since my idea of how to fix a sawed-through kitchen table stops short of hot glue, I have been trying to practice mindfulness.

When you experience something that irritates you, you’re supposed to take a step back and try to take a longer view.

I guarantee this works. If you take a step back and fall into an open sewer, you’ll get a sense of the important things in life. You’ll also get parasites.

But you’ll also get a hefty payment from your municipal authority, especially if you have a good lawyer.

Because I don’t have an open sewer handy, I must make a special effort to be mindful. It’s difficult because I get fire-out-the-eyeballs levels of irritated at minor things.

You know when you’re eating saltine crackers, and the wrapper gets static electricity in it and sticks to your hand so that you practically have to dislocate your elbow to dislodge it?

Or when you leave something upstairs and have to slog all the way up to get it, only to forget what it is?

Then you go downstairs and finally your brain kicks in, so you have to go back up, only now you bark your shin on a step?

Or when your editor tells you to stop asking rhetorical questions because they make you sound dumb? Who knew?

Just listing these things gets my blood boiling! I’d march straight out my front door and complain to my municipal authority, if only I could turn the deadbolt.

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Alexandra Paskhaver is a software engineer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to stick semicolons, but she’s never quite; figured; it; out. For more information, check out her website at https://apaskhaver.github.io.