The Hardest Thing

I have faced and had to do some very hard things in my life. We all have. But yesterday was more than I could take. It came in the form of vacuum-packed salami. When I go to the grocery I always buy lunch meat from the butcher counter where the employees pull out the rolls of roast beef, ham, turkey and cheese from the big windowed cases and then slice a pound or so, wrap it in white paper and place it in a plastic bag. It is fresh, sliced as requested and very easy to access once you get it home. When Sarah goes to the grocery she always buys pre-packaged lunch meat like Oscar Mayer Bologna or salami. Those packages are very easy to deal with. But recently Sarah has discovered these vacuum-packed brands. She doesn’t eat lunchmeat – or very rarely – so she is unaware of the tremendous physical challenges facing an average citizen when attempting to open these packages. So yesterday I opened the fridge and grabbed what I needed to make a sandwich for lunch and encountered a newly purchased package of salami. It had one of those zipper-type openers. I tried for a minute to rip the perforated plastic, as it seemed designed to work. I could not. I then opened a drawer hoping to find the scissors I try to keep in there for such circumstances. They were gone – they’d probably been gone since just before Christmas when someone was wrapping presents. So I tried to cut through the plastic with the rather dull knife I had in my hand. This did not work. I started getting really pissed off and let off some verbal steam. No one else was home except our two Golden Retrievers who ran from the kitchen as if hell itself had broken through the floor beneath my feet. I then resorted to the age-old device of placing the package between my incisors and ripping it open like an animal. It was too tough. Hell broke through again and the dogs ran into our walk-in closet. I went to another drawer and pulled out a serrated Cutco knife we bought from a high-school friend that I swore to never use again because I had almost bled to death the last time I used it. With great caution I placed the vacuum-packed salami package on the cutting board and simply sliced through the middle of it at a 90-degree angle. I picked up the two sides and ripped them apart. Then I made my sandwich. It was good.