Things I Want to Actually Run Out Of
My last post was about things that I never want to run out of.
And it got me thinking. Are there things that I would very much like to run out of, properly, all the way down to nothing, and never get to? Turns out there are. Here's the top five. And yes, there were more than five.
The Hiss
You shake the can and you can hear it. There is liquid in there. Not a trace amount, an audible amount, sloshing about like it has somewhere better to be.
Then you press down and get a small polite hiss. Air. That is all that comes out now. The propellant is gone, and it has taken your ability to access anything with it.
So you shake it again. Harder this time, as if the problem was enthusiasm. Same hiss. You do this three or four times before accepting that a can with liquid in it is going in the bin.
The Long Roll
The toothpaste tube has stages.
First the casual squeeze. Then the squeeze from the bottom, which feels like maturity. Then the roll, where you fold the end over and work it up the tube like you are wringing out a towel. Then the thumbnail, dragged along the seam with real force.
By the end the tube is a flat, creased, silver thing. And there is still toothpaste in it. Not enough to brush with, maybe. Enough to know about. And it bugs me that I can't get to it using the conventional methods I've mentioned. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't cut open the tube. It was only a partially successful attempt.
The Curve
Jam jars are designed by people who have never eaten jam.
The worst part is not the bottom. The worst part is the shoulder.
Just below the opening, the jar swells outward before it narrows into the neck. It sits there like a small inner tube. A ring of glass that is wider than the hole you have to reach through. Which means there is a band of jam around the inside of the jar, at eye level, that you can see perfectly and cannot get to.
A knife is straight. You go in, you hit the underside of the shoulder, and the knife stops. You turn it sideways and scrape upward at an angle like a surgeon. You get about a third of it. The rest stays welded to the roof of the jar.
Then you look down and remember there is a second curve at the base doing exactly the same thing.
So every jar I have ever finished has two rings of jam left in it. Top and bottom. In a low moment I have used my finger, assuming I can reach. It does not clear either one and it makes you feel like a bin chicken with fingers.
I would like a jar with straight sides and a square bottom. That is the whole request. Someone please make a jar that respects the shape of cutlery.
Technically this problem is not limited to jam jars. It applies to any jar with spreadable contents.
Ink, Visible
I like writing with pens. I mostly use gel or ballpoint pens. The ones with refills. The refill still has ink in it. You can see the ink. A good couple of millimetres of it, sitting in full view.
The pen does not write.
So you begin the ritual. The scribble in the corner of the page. The harder scribble. The small hopeful circles. The diagonal scratching. The bit where you hold it at a different angle because maybe that is the problem. The bit where you warm the tip up on your hand, which I am fairly sure I invented and which has never once worked.
Then you throw away a pen that contains ink. This is the one that bothers me most, because the failure is so specific. Nothing ran out. A very small ball stopped rolling.
Sealed Shut
Superglue is the only one on this list that defeats you while sitting completely still, doing nothing, in a drawer.
You buy it for one job. The job takes forty seconds. Then you wipe the tip, you screw the cap back on properly, and you put it away feeling like a person who looks after his tools.
Three weeks later something else breaks. You go to the drawer. The tube is still heavy. There is clearly glue in there, most of it, because you used a drop. The cap will not turn. When it finally does, the nozzle has become a small solid rock with no hole in it.
So you get a pin. You push the pin into the rock. Nothing. You cut the tip off with scissors, which is the last card you have, and either nothing comes out at all or the entire tube empties onto your hand at once. There is no version in between.
Then you throw away a nearly full tube of glue, buy another one, use it for forty seconds, and put it away carefully.
None of these are real problems either.
But there is a particular kind of irritation in being defeated by packaging. Not by running out. By not being allowed to finish. The product is there, you own it, and you are deprived of the satisfaction of using it completely.
The amount left is always small.
It is also mine.