We have a strong can opener preference, chez Gladly; we like the side-cut kind and NOT the top-cut kind. The side-cut kinds don't last as long, though, and we are currently between can openers. The last one, in its death throes, spat some metal shards into a can of evaporated milk over the weekend, a lapse that caused it to be ejected from the premises post-haste.
When Elwood and I were dating, I felt like I kept bumping up against new kinds of can openers in his family's kitchen. "How am I supposed to open a can with this thing?" I would harrumph, and Elwood or his mother would attempt to give me instructions. They must have had every one of the fifteen types of can openers listed in this article, and I found many of them bewildering.
While we waited for our replacement can opener to arrive in the mail, I was reluctantly opening cans with the pointy end of a churchkey. "This can is an ER trip waiting to happen," I announced in the kitchen, having once accompanied a kid to urgent care who tried to go up against a can of sweetened condensed milk armed only with a churchkey. The next time we needed to open a can, Elwood found a multi-tool with an attachment labeled "can opener," and busted a series of moves that I could not duplicate if I were starving on a desert island.
Today I texted him this grocery list--
--and he came home with a carload of stuff. "Can I get some grocery help?" he asked as he walked in. Just looking at the grocery bags left me feeling appreciative: Joe asked for lots of bananas and so Elwood, on the worst day of the year for grocery shopping, made sure to get lots of bananas. He went to two Krogers because the first one was out of cranberries.
Then I pulled the newly purchased Kroger-brand can opener out of the bag. "There was a time in our relationship when you would have just told me to suck it up and figure out the multi-tool," I told him. "So I kinda want to press this can opener to my heart and exclaim about how loved it makes me feel." And then I found the pineapple, with its ring-pull top, and I did press it to my heart. "That's so sweet!" I said, because I can assure you I would not have had much patience for digging through pineapple cans in search of a ring-pull top on the day before Thanksgiving.
Stella came around the corner. "Mom?" she inquired, "are you...pressing a can of pineapple to your heart?"
I think at 13 I would not have thought it especially romantic for someone to bring me an emergency can opener, or a can of pineapple with a ring-pull top. But I am older and wiser now, and I can tell when someone is saying he really loves me.
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