Zip lock bags - The Thin Edge of Dignity

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Dick Weinman is an AARP volunteer and an assisted living guru

When I left rehearsals one summer's night, I had an opportunity to enjoy one of the best and simplest joys of the season. (Yes! Despite my battered body, nonfunctioning  hands, and wheelchair mobility, I fulfill my long time desire to act. . . as long as it’s the Readers Theatre – where the short-term memory loss of an eighty-three year old and the inability to move around in a set, doesn’t hamper the smooth performance of a play – and a committed friend will drive me to rehearsals at the theatre.

Oops. I got off-the-track: I was saying, as I was leaving rehearsal the other night, a fellow cast member handed each actor several, newly picked cherry-tomatoes – in air-tight and firmly zipped zip-lock bags.  What a bounty!

I saw those cute, tiny, pop-‘em-in-your-mouth tiny spheres of luscious red – like a woman’s full, expectant, magnetizing lips – and I could hardly wait to pull apart the tightly sealed and zipped zip-lock. . . but my fingers wouldn’t follow the commands of my brain. No. Not that they wouldn’t; they couldn’t. That’s because of the damage to the ulna (or is it the radial) bone from the accident that disabled me.

Like Jack Armstrong, I remained undaunted: if the fingers didn’t work, I’d try a more movable body part – my mouth and decades-old teeth, but still the original front two.  I raised the tomato laden plastic baggie to my waiting mouth, slipped it through my anxiously awaiting lips to my primed, eager teeth, clamped down forcefully, tasting the blue colored plastic strips that clung the two sides together – then  sniffing the luxurious garden-fresh aroma of the tomatoes, I  slowly pulled my head back while, simultaneously, with the locked fingers my hands, pulled the top of the zip-lock in the opposite direction. . . . NOTHING HAPPENED.  The resilient top of the bag didn’t move. The zip stayed locked. (I guess that’s why it’s named Zip-Lock.)

I did get to taste the plastic, however. Rather blah. Probably bad for my health.

*****

That’s the zip-lock portion of ZIP-LOCK AND OTHER STUFF.  The OTHER STUFF will be discussed in a subsequent blog.

[Photo: Istock Zeleno]