Salsa Spill
My girlfriend has a bad habit of not screwing jar lids on securely and capping containers with lids that don’t fit. I don’t know where she picked it up or why she’s never corrected it, but this leads to all sorts of unfunny comedy around the house.
Most of us when reaching into the fridge for a jar of, oh let’s say salsa, grasp the container by the glass sides, not the li on top. That’s because of the way the glass cylinder is made to fit in your hand, providing a secure hold and preventing spillage. In fact, I recall my mom giving my sister and me a hard time when we were kids about carrying glasses properly, because every time we carried a glass from the top (ie, from the rim), inevitably our fingers would slip and the juice would go splashing all over a rug. So it’s instinctive at this point: hold the glass from the side, not the top.
And since most of us assume that the lid of a given product, again let’s say it’s salsa, has been properly replaced by the previous user, it’s not second nature to test that the lid has been replaced properly. Is that an accurate presumption? Do any of my readers make a point of testing the lid of a container before removing it from the refrigerator? Seriously: I would like to know.
Packing my lunch for work this morning, I saw a jar of salsa in the fridge and decided to bring it with me to complement the bag of chips at the office. So I reached into the fridge, grasped the lidded jar by the sides the way my mother taught me, and placed the jar on its side in the milk crate I’ve attached to the back of my bike as a storage container.
But because my girlfriend has a bad habit of not screwing lids onto jars properly, by the time I got here, the entire crate was covered with a thick pile of goopy, tomatoey salsa that will soon begin to fizzle in the 90 degree heat, attracting flies and probably yellow-jackets to my bike.
I honestly don’t know what to do: maybe I should start doing it back in the hopes that a purse or car-seat full of yogurt or something equally smelly will change her habits.
Ahh, the joys of cohabitation.
August 11th, 2009 at 11:30 am
sorry brendan, even though i detest that awful habit of christina’s and wouldn’t tolerate it in my home (HAHA) you know she doesn’t screw the lids on so why are you packing your bike w/o checking to see if lids are on tight?
hope you’ll still call tonight!
August 11th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
i will call tonight.
and the reason i don’t check is it’s instinctual to assume the jar is closed so i don’t think about it.