The Hoops Val Jumps Through To Fulfill Her Destiny

Okay. So you mean to tell me that we can send multiple men to the moon and back, multiple times, in an era when the components of today's basic calculator filled an entire room...but we can't design a plastic that will hold three boxes of Puffs Extra Strength together long enough to get them home from the store, then allow us to pull them apart without a blowtorch, scalpel, and jackhammer?

Seriously. Why should obtaining blottage for snottage of one's students be such an ordeal?

This morning I saw that the Puffs With Lotion box the resides near my pencil sharpener was nearing Old Mother Hubbard cupboard status. I opened my wooden cabinet, the side students are not allowed access, because we all know that Puffs are educational institution gold. Uh huh. I can't believe anybody would not know that, what with all those elementary and middle grade teachers demanding a ransom of at least two boxes per student per school year.

So I had this three-pack of Puffs Extra Strength, because when I did my shopping that week, Walmart only had one three-pack of Puffs With Lotion, which of course rightfully belonged to me, let the students eat cake. I mean blow their noses on Extra Strength Puffs. Because they're always taking more than one Puffs With Lotion, you know, like they are fire-snotting dragons whose fluids can't be contained by a lone Puffs With Lotion. And besides, those who wait until they get to school to clean their spectacles make it clear that they do not appreciate the Puffs With Lotion.

There I was, tussling with that three-pack like Dick the Bruiser challenging Andre the Giant on a Sunday morning broadcast of Wrestling At the Chase. I tried everything short of a figure-four leglock, to no avail. That plastic was impervious to my prying fingers. You know how sometimes you can use your teeth to gnaw a little hole into a wad of plastic? Didn't happen. That dastardly plastic slipped from between my incisors, causing them to crash together fruitlessly. I grabbed my keyring. Did you know that an ignition key for a 2008 Tahoe is no match for the super indestructible plastic that lashes three boxes of Extra Strength Puffs together? It's uncanny. Almost like that plastic was the part that's extra-strength! It took a tiny little viciously sharp cabinet lock key to finally stab an entrance wound into that package plastic.

You know how you can sometimes wiggle a finger into a hole in plastic, and enlarge it bit by bit until that hole is stretched big enough to remove whatever you're trying to unwrap? Didn't happen. I got my right index finger in there, but enlarge that hole I could not. My poor digit twisted until it looked like a gnarled branch on a Japanese bonsai tree. It did, however, make that tiny hole into a small hole. I managed to get my left index finger in there as well, and pulled on that opening until I looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, tearing a New York City phone book in half.

SUCCESS!

Much like if you want to play in Texas, you gotta have a fiddle in the band...if you want to be a teacher, you gotta have a little strength of hand.