Frumpy Mom: Excuse me while I try to bash this bottle open

Over the years, I’ve given you people lots of useless advice, but here’s some that you shouldn’t ignore: Get yourself a live-in body builder.

If this is impossible, I’m willing to rent out my son for a nominal fee. He can bench press 300 pounds.

The reason you need a strongman in your house is simple: Someone has to open all those bottles, jars and packages that come so hermetically sealed that only a nuclear bomb will blow them open. Well, a nuclear bomb or a bodybuilding son. You choose.

Like the rest of America, I’ve been suffering with this problem for many years, but it only continues to get worse. It finally came to a head for me last week, when I tried for 867 straight hours to open a bottle of Kirkland Kombucha from Costco.

If you aren’t familiar with kombucha, it’s a fermented, slightly fizzy tea drink that’s supposedly full of stuff that’s really good for you. I first learned of this when I visited an artisan cheese dairy in Sonoma County, where the owner assured me that kombucha is such a magic healer, she even feeds it to her cows when they get sick.

Well, who am I to argue with that? So I bought some and discovered I really liked it. Imagine that! Liking something that’s healthy for you. Of course, it’s a little expensive, because something I like that’s healthy couldn’t also be cheap. Anyway, I was delighted to discover kombucha at Costco at a reasonably affordable price, so I bought a package of the lemon ginger variety.

Sadly, though, I had to delay gratification when I got home, for the simple reason that it’s impossible to open the bottle without a sledgehammer, which I worried might ruin the taste. That plastic cap is affixed so tightly that none of my usual tricks would work. My hand strength went south years ago, thanks to useless cancer treatments, so I now use a plethora of devices to open stuff, including bottle openers, jar openers, scissors, shears, pliers, you name it.

But this Costco kombucha refused to yield to any of my ministrations, even when I talked to it quietly and explained that I needed it for my health. My friend came over, and she couldn’t open it either. I finally got so frustrated that I made a video to send to Costco, demonstrating the problem. You know things are serious when I start making crappy videos.

Luckily, at that point, my body builder son Cheetah Boy came home, and I handed him the bottle. Even he grimaced, but he did get it open and I realized this stuff needs a warning label on it, that it should only be consumed after assistance from a weight lifter.

I drank the kombucha. It was delicious. The hint of spicy ginger plus the tart, mouth watering lemon was exactly what my mouth was craving. I wanted more. But I couldn’t have more, even though it was in my refrigerator, because my fixer had gone to the gym.

My theory is that companies deliberately make their products impossible to open, so you’ll have to buy more in a fruitless attempt to get those open.

When I posted about this on my Facebook page (you are on my Facebook page, aren’t you? It’s at Facebook.com/FrumpyMiddleagedMom), I got a torrent of response from readers about their own struggles with items imprisoned in packages that were utterly resistant to human beings.

Many people complained about hearing aid battery packages, especially from Costco, which apparently require nitroglycerin to open. Do you manufacture these? Can you explain, please, why they need to be encased in entirely human-resistant packages? Especially considering they’re mostly sold to older people with limited hand strength? We want answers!

Apparently, due to complaints, Costco posted on its website that it’s required by the 2022 Reese’s Law to make packaging for the batteries that’s “certified child-resistant.” But from what my readers say, it’s also adult-resistant. Only Edward Scissorhands could easily open it.

But, of course, those aren’t the only problem packages. One reader told me she keeps an emergency pipe wrench handy in a kitchen drawer. Others use garden shears. Apparently a container of garlic salt proved so impossible that the buyer finally just punched holes in it.

My friend Mary told me that it took her two knives and “a lot of hammering” to open a Talenti gelato container. (I guess that’s the diet version.) “There are literally videos on TikTok on how to open a Talenti container,” she said.

I think making human-proof packaging should be a crime, and the CEOs of the manufacturing companies should be sentenced to sit and try to open their own containers for one entire day — without tools. I think that’s fair, don’t you?