The Days of Whine

By LC Van Savage

Through no fault of my own I have a very nice life, but even knowing that, I still reserve the right to whine occasionally, just to keep the balance, so that’s what I’ll do now.

There are three things in my life that simply never work for me. I hate them. Even as I approach them my heart starts to hammer, my BP shoots up and I know the minute I touch them, I’m doomed to failure. Yes I do believe in the power of positive thinking; for others, not I. I can think positively about these 3 things for 85 straight hours, and they still won’t work.

The first is restaurant teapots. You know, those little usually stainless steel ones containing hot water for tea, although any sort have the same problem for me; they do not work. They always, without fail, leak. I pour them with the lids on, the lids off, holding the lids down in a death grip with a napkin; no good. They leak. Do you suppose they’re made like that to drive restaurant patrons nutsy? I mean are there sadistic, laughing people somewhere in factories designing those teapots to leak? I think yes. I know yes.

The second thing I hate? Toaster ovens. I own one because I have friends and family members who think toaster ovens are wondrous gifts from the appliance gods. But they’re not. I simply can never, ever make them work. I push all the buttons, twirl all the dials, even read the manual, but they won’t work. Bread slices waiting within, if I finally get that light to come on, I can count on the house smoke alarms to start blasting, because for me, toaster ovens have 2 speeds; burn and burn a lot. Furthermore, they’re uncleanable. When ours gets really gross, I vacuum the crumbs out, or shake the thing over the sink, but eventually just throw it out even if it still works (gleeful murder) which it never did anyway. And when I spend time in someone’s home for a few days as a guest and see a toaster oven on the counter, I clench. Those little white appliances dare me to try to cook my AM toast in them. They love to humiliate me. They squat there, glaring with their evil, square glass cyclops eyeball and I know they laugh. I passionately hate toaster ovens, but do have a conventional toaster in my home, for normal people.

Third? Corkscrews. I’m a non-drinker, but it’s fallen to me over the years to occasionally open a bottle of wine, another chore I approach with fear. I just cannot do it, but when I have to, I carry a small strainer to the table to strain out the shoved-down cork pieces while convincing my guests it’s commonly known that cork shards are important for good duodenum health.

I always watch with unabashed envy while waitpeople screw corkscrews into bottle necks and ease those corks out in toto as if they’ve been greased. Never happens with me.

My brother, a wine aficionado (boring) once gave me a cork remover. It’s two different lengths of thin blades with a handle on top one forces down each side of the cork, then twists, pulls, and voila! Out comes the cork.

No. I twist and pull and my arm and brother’s gift go flying into a wall whilst the bottle crashes to the floor from between my knees with the cork exactly where the bottlers originally put it.

I really think the most successful way to open a bottle of wine is the old cowboy method; bashing the neck against something until it’s broken off, then grabbing the strainer and pouring the wine, this time avoiding all talk about duodena, because shattered glass probably isn’t good for anything internal although I don’t know that for sure.

There you have it. Whining done.