This Is Ridiculous

The public expects certain abilities from people with a college degree. I’m actually competent at many of these, including having a job, driving without hitting things, subsistence-level cooking, and buying my own laundry detergent. I even have a few bonus advanced skills, such as baking cakes and correctly using semicolons.

It’s the abilities generally expected of the average four-year-old that elude me. Stuff like drinking out of open containers.

Back in the mid ’00s, before we learned that hard plastics will kill us all, I carried a one-quart Nalgene water bottle with me everywhere and drank an amount of water that would drown most marine plants. Hydration is great and all that, but my bottle had a four-inch opening, and as far as coordination was concerned, I might as well have stuck my head in a stock tank.

Raising that bottle to my mouth was like trying to drink from a bucket on horseback at sea in a hurricane. With seizures.

I routinely ended up with drool-like rivulets cascading onto my clothing, particularly if I was preparing to look trustworthy and professional.

Since then I’ve replaced my Nalgene with a series of stainless steel bottles whose neck sizes ranged down to one inch, including one with a straw, and I still manage to spill all over myself at least twice a day. Plus, life events keep requiring me to drink out of cups and glasses containing things like red wine or Great Bluedini Kool-Aid, for which “just let it dry out” is not a viable solution.

I need to either gain more muscle control or invest in a cut-glass sippy cup.

UPDATE: I poured both tea and water down my face while writing this. I’m starting to understand why my parents didn’t like to let me have purple grape juice as a child.