So I’m opening a can of frozen concentrated orange juice – you know, the kind where you add three cans of water – when it occurred to me, as much as anything occurs to me at 6:14 in the morning, that hey, I’ve been making orange juice this way all of my adult life.
In other words, the can hasn’t changed in a half-century. Grab the little strip at the top, pull it around the can, and pop the lid. Which got me to thinking – by now it was 6:17 a.m. – that in a world where our phones go obsolete every 18 months, what has stayed exactly the same for as long as I can remember? Here’s my list. Feel free to make up your own:
- Canned biscuits. Same idea as the orange juice. Peel the little strip around the can, then hit on the edge until it pops open.
- Wax paper, foil, plastic wrap. Same sizes, same little teeth to help you tear.
- Electric carving knife, steam iron, hand mixer – though I understand the iron and mixer have gone digital.
- Buttons, zippers, shoelaces. While Velcro may still hold sway with the toddler crowd, most of us eventually graduate to shoelaces.
- Beer-can openers, paring knife, ice pick.
- Measuring cups and spoons, rolling pin. Not sure, however, if irate wives still greet their wayward husbands with the latter.
- Pot holders, tea bags, toothpicks.
- Morton salt, Calumet baking powder, Arm & Hammer baking soda. Helpful hint, sorely realized: Never, ever substitute baking powder for baking soda. Or vice versa.
- Hair spray. Still sticky. Still works.
- Eyelash curlers. I must have gone through a half-dozen since puberty, plus another two dozen of those little rubber doo-dads that keep you from yanking the lashes away from your lids.
- Bar soap. Sure, there are plenty of those fancy body washes that goop out, but your basic bar soap remains the same.
- Tube of lipstick. Colors come and go, but the swivel-out tube remains the same.
- Shovel, rake, wheelbarrow.
OK, here are the things that have changed – and continue to change:
- Telephones. Am I the only one who still has a flip-open phone – the kind where you have to click three letters to get the one you want? And you wonder why I don’t text.
- Coffee makers. Remember when you could make 12 cups of coffee at a time?
- Soda pop and beer cans. Bad thing: They’re now light as foil. Good thing: No one smashes them against their foreheads anymore to prove their manhood.
- Mattresses. Pillow top, foam, the underbellies of yaks. Whatever it takes to pile them up so high you’ll get a nosebleed just climbing into bed.
- Washing machines and dryers. Somehow, they now cost more than my second car — without transporting me to the grocery store.
- Toothpaste. Used to come in a metal tube. Now it’s plastic, with enough flavors and colors – tell me, do they still make it in stripes? – to keep you grinning, if not cavity-free.
- Bras. First they were all-cotton, then polyester. Now they all come in rather intimidating foam shapes, guaranteed to make anyone a sweater girl. And all we had were Kleenex.
