Crinkles

This all came to mind when I dropped my cell phone into the bathwater.

I am old enough that I can recall a time when drugs that are today either banned or at least strongly regulated were sold over the counter. As a child, I clearly remember my parents dispensing paregoric (a type of opium) mixed with kaolin clay to treat diarrhea—one of the more horrific tastes one can experience in a lifetime, I assure you. It was almost better to endure the diarrhea. The cough mixture we kids were given was a sugary syrup compounded with cherry bark extract, alcohol, and codeine. (That was absolutely delicious, by the way.) I know modern parents will shudder upon reading about these treatments. I shuddered myself as a young parent, treating my child’s illnesses while recalling what I’d been given. Nevertheless, the mixtures were once common; everyone used them.

But while I clearly recall the taste and texture of the medicines, I also have a faint memory of the bottles from which they were dispensed—bottles that did not have, as those today do, labels adhering to the plastic (or what would then have been glass). No, those old bottles had paper labels attached to the bottle with just a dot of glue here and there on the front and back. But the most significant feature of those old-fashioned labels was that the sides of the paper were crinkled. Corrugated folds and creases marched up and down the edges of the labels where one grasped the bottle. And these crinkles served a purpose—a dual purpose, actually. If one picked up the bottle in darkness, feeling creases beneath one’s fingers alerted the user to the fact that the contents were poisonous. Take too much paregoric, or too large a dose of codeine, and sickness, if not death, would be the result. The corrugated sides also served a second practical function; they provided a grip. It was much harder to drop the bottle and spill a dangerous substance if the label provided a firm grasp.

This all came to mind the other day when I dropped my cell phone into my little granddaughter’s bathwater. Oh, SHIT! I retrieved it quickly enough that no damage was done, yet it struck me immediately that, had the sides of the case been wavy, there would have been far less chance of this accident. Like those old poison bottle labels, a few crinkles could have averted disaster. That led me to think about the bath scrubby that was so often the bane of my existence as I tried, and failed, to find the little ribbon to hang it up after using it. That stupid little ribbon was always the same color as the nylon net scrubby itself, and, standing there, cold, naked and with dripping hair pouring water into my eyes, I could never find the darned thing. Often after fighting and failing to locate the ribbon, I just furiously tossed the scrubby down into the tub rather than hanging it up to dry. If the stupid ribbon had just been a contrasting or darker color, I could have located it immediately and hung the thing up properly.

Extrapolating from this, I considered how many times I’d dropped the blasted shampoo or conditioner or bodywash bottles because the sides, slippery with water and product, were impossible to hold. The bottles slid right through my fingers and crashed to the bottom of the tub, usually on my toes, and usually when the bottle was still mostly full and heavy. Oww-Oww-Ouch! Extremely bad words deleted, ouch! Just a few wavy crinkles would have solved the problem and saved my cringing feet from yet another onslaught.

Ditto the olive oil bottles. I don’t even want to think about the 2018 Olive Oil Disaster on the Freshly Mopped Floor. I was cleaning up that mess for days and days and DAYS. Not to mention what I found when I did the annual “stop pretending like you don’t know it’s there and pull that bottom drawer out from beneath the oven” cleaning.

Contemplating all this, though, it struck me to wonder why we tend to think of every idea, every concept, from previous generations as “old fashioned” notions that can have absolutely no modern relevance. I’m certain contemporary manufacturers, who spend a fortune on designing products for eye appeal, would never even consider a bottle that did not have a sleek, up-to-date appearance. Not for them a papery label with corrugated sides to provide a grip and alert one that the contents could, if misused, be dangerous. How unattractive a bottle, meant to be used in a wet environment, with wavy indentations that made it easy to hold. How ugly to string a black ribbon on the pale pink scrubby so that it would be easy to spot. How foolish to make a sleek cell phone with ridged and grooved grips.

How old-fashioned.

How sensible.

We could all just use a few more crinkles.

Liked this essay? Then you might also enjoy ” ‘New and Improved’ Just Isn’t”, which you can locate in the Archives, below, from March 25, 2020.