Time was, we could open lids. We do it everyday, screw with lids. We can do Rubik’s Cube — why not open a simple tube of toothpaste? Twist and turn; push and rotate; pull tab; push here to open; fold, spindle and mutilate; cut on dotted line; tear here to reseal; follow dots on perforated line. None seem to work.

It’s worse than standing on one foot, rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time.

Who invented the creamers with those minuscule tabs? Your front teeth won’t even grasp it and you don’t have a little Chinese man in your back pocket.

Wall-mounted bottle openers or can openers were right there for you. Bottled drinks were sealed with a cork and delivered, and you could save the caps for things. You could make hats out of metal pull tabs.

Why people saved rubber bands was a puzzlement. Grandpa would put them on the door knob or door post as he came in from gettin’ the paper. All four of those are gone now, for some. The largest rubber band ball is 9,032 pounds in Lauderhill, Fla.

Twist ties should have their own special place in hell. Rusty wires that poke you, impossible to unwind, and why do people twist them to the end and then bend them over to double hold? One twist is enough, especially on a Christmas tree that is going nowhere for a month.

Those plastic ties should be given to OCD women to keep idle hands busy like the Greek, Sisyphus, who had to roll the rock back up the hill forever. Or you could join a book club. Lighten up on the florist wires on your tree trimmings. Snow hangs on with no hooks.

Who can find the end of a roll of tape — duct, scotch (to prevent movement), masking or invisible that seems to go backwards or comes off in fragments when you need it now. Do the people who make Elmer’s not know how frustrating the nozzle can be after it glues shut? Like LePage glue in glass bottles with the rubber nipple that always tempted you to lick it or sniff it.

Cat food cans are the worst to open. That pull tab flip always flicks a morsel right into your face for you to get a whiff of all day, just like the slick stuff on the sole of your shoe afterwards.

Keep an Exacto knife handy if you plan to wash your clothes. Rosie the Riveter couldn’t “push here” to open that cardboard box. How to you start that reseal tab on bags?

Sick people should not be given puzzles to get at their prescription. We are too weak, old, cripple and blind for secret combinations. Why do we replace that ball of cotton (polyfill) in the bottle?

Why does milk have a plastic band, a plastic lid and a seal? Don’t they trust mothers?

And what’s with that bacon wrapper with that flap thing inside? Do you tear it off or tuck it under? You can’t reseal it. Bob just fries up the whole pack at once. Or you can just give up and put it inside another Baggie and then in a plastic container and throw away the old bag in a white, kitchen-size bag into a larger “heavy duty” black plastic bag with a plastic gripper tie, or do the old hand crossover maneuver tie and then drag it out to the lined rollout bin in a plastic tote to be picked up by Danny’s boys (at a fee) to be given a ride to the Campbell Road landfill site with a plastic liner to keep it ’til Jesus comes. A lot of the 4.5 pounds per day per resident is biodegradable and shouldn’t even be there but rather in a material recovery facility.

Grandma just put a cloth over the leftovers for the next meal or canned it with the old zinc Mason milk glass lids with a rubber seal in the hot water bath. Then the one with the strongest grip was volunteered to open it in the door jamb, between your legs, using hot water or, as a last resort, tapping with the knife handle until the jar breaks. Chef Santo’s hint is simply puncture the lid and it opens on the first try.

Pot lids, no matter how many you have in the drawer under the oven, you never have the right size at the right time. The lid monster must come get them at night and save them somewhere else in a dark place.

People save things they might need some time. We don’t rightly know when that time will come, but we will be ready. Misers have plastic bags of straightened twist ties, old stamps, paper clips, together with push pins, old pennies, bits of string.

There are multiple claims, but the largest ball of string belonged to Frank Stoeber, who died in 1974. Cawker City, Kansas, still celebrates the Twineathon in August each year, when they add to the estimated 20,000-pound, 1.7-million-foot-long string that will never be used again. All replaced by one reusable perfect bungie cord, invented by some perspicacious Yankee who obviously doesn’t need his left eye to whine about anymore. And a simple clothes pin or safety pin will solve most modern-day dilemmas of coming unglued or unwound. There is also hearsay that you can get a “lid” of pot to get you through self-invented disasters with no help, or you can just simply put a lid on it.

Clyde is a Salisbury artist.