WHAT SHE MISSES ABOUT THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
angi becker stevens
She’s not really old enough for this sort of nostalgia, but one thing she misses about the twentieth century is the containers, before everything had plastic lids. She misses prying paint cans open, working a flat-head screwdriver all the way around the circumference until the lid sprang off with that satisfying pop. She misses the old coffee cans, the slicing into metal with the old-school manual can-opener, and the way the smell of the coffee grounds would hit her all at once when the top of the can snapped free. She came of age along with the internet and cell phones, it’s not technology she minds. She minds that the world is becoming less tactile. She bought a vibrator—sleek, curved plastic and rubber that looks a little like a bent computer mouse. It gets her off in 30 seconds, and afterward she almost feels like she wasn’t even in the room with herself when it happened. She thinks, efficiency is not always best. All of this plastic is no substitute for the slow, satisfying things we used to do with our hands.
Angi Becker Stevens
http://angibeckerstevens.blogpot.com
Big World
Mary Miller