Peeved by plastics
Anyone remember L’Eggs?
We women remember: L’Eggs were the pantyhose housed in plastic eggs and sold on racks at drugstores. Back in the days when I wore a skirt, sensible pumps and pantyhose to work every day, I’d scramble into the store and spin that rack until I got to my size and color. The next morning, I’d crack open that plastic egg and pull out the crumpled handful of nylon, unfurl it and thread my legs into it.
“It was exhausting,” said my friend Gina. She’d recently found some unopened L’eggs while sorting a closet. “Except for a wedding and an awards gala, I’m happy to say I haven’t worn those or any other pantyhose in 20 years,” she said.
“Me, it’s been 30,” I said, one-upping her.
I know 30 because my son just turned that age, and I resigned from my job in TV news several months before he was born. Have I dressed up since then? Occasionally, but I’ve evaded the pantyhose.
My friend and I talked about how much of our emotional energy and time were devoted to the procurement and management of pantyhose: the selecting, the buying, and worst of all, the washing. Every other night or so, I’d fill the bathroom sink with water, add a special detergent that promised to prevent runs and snags (a lie), soak the hose, roll them in towels to remove the water and then hang them on the shower rod to dry. Pantyhose stalactites.
“Hours every week doing that,” I said.
We thought about what mundane and annoying task has taken the place of the pantyhose.
Plastic containers. Obviously.
I’m overrun with plastic containers and lids. The large and deep shelf at the top of the pantry is where they live in a majestic jumble. The other day I went digging to find a container and lid in which to store the watermelon I’d just cut up. Twenty containers and 30 lids and no matches. I’ve completed jigsaw puzzles that took less time.
I will occasionally cook meals for a family member and take them when I visit. There on the counter are the washed containers from my last visit. I’ll take them home and return them to the pantry shelf; behind that closed cabinet door they get up to no good, shrinking their bottoms and wiggling free of their lids. Finding a match requires a level of dexterity and hand-eye coordination that I do not possess.
Looking for an upgrade, I invested in some glass containers with locking lids designed to nest into each other on the shelf. They nested like cute Russian dolls until I used them to carry dessert to a potluck and never saw them again. (My mother would never have let that happen. For all the six decades I knew her, she would bake a coconut cake and carry it to parties in a metal sheet-cake pan with a perfect sliding, metal lid. She never went home without it, and I doubt there was a single moment where she did not know the safe whereabouts of that perfect container.)
“Part of being an adult is understanding how much of life will be consumed by the management of plastic containers,” Gina said. We evolve to eschew pantyhose and all their upkeep, only to be faced with the gaping maw of plastic. This never gets easier, does it?
After rummaging for the right match, I gave up, put the watermelon into a mixing bowl and covered it with aluminum foil. Maybe the right container and match were lurking in the cabinet somewhere, but I doubt it.