Celebrating freedoms – and still waiting for more

Today we celebrate our nation's many freedoms. But are we truly, totally free?

Of course not.

Certainly we have escaped, as a model for the world, so many of the bonds that enslave too many people around the globe.

But we still can't open a package of AAA batteries without uttering a few choice words.

Why is that?

Why is it so hard to open modern packaging? Do manufacturers think we are so desperate to buy and use their products that we will suffer indignities and sliced forefingers to do so?

I know. I know. Most of today's packaging is an attempt to thwart shoplifters and other thieves who menace the marketplace. So let's say the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention's statistics are correct:

A total of $13 billion a year in merchandise is shoplifted from U.S. retailers.

There are 27 million shoplifters in our fair land.

One in 11 Americans is a shoplifter (counting babes in arms).

Twenty-five percent of shoplifters are kids.

What this means is that there are an awful lot of us who don't steal from supermarkets, mom-and-pop retail shops or The Store That Has Everything.

Nearly 300 million of us pay for what we pick up at the store. The price includes the cost of packaging designed to keep us from stealing merchandise. Sometimes you have to think you're paying more for the package that you are for the contents. The price also includes shoplifting losses.

Plus, you are paying for the privilege of trying to extract your newly purchased product from its ironclad plastic tomb.

I seem to recall a few years ago that a product was being touted to solve some of my packaging dilemma. It was a special cutting device to be used specifically on the odd-shaped packages that contain everything from lipstick to toenail lotion. As I further recall, this was a boon for the manufacturers of bandages.

This world is full of wordy columnists like me who are great at pointing out the problem but downright terrible at offering solutions. That goes for the political columnists -- on both sides -- who love to tear down someone or someone's ideas without ever suggesting a good alternative.

Well, folks, I am going to make a proposal regarding today's consumer packaging.

Remember pickle barrels? Remember cracker boxes at the general store?

Maybe you don't.

There was a time when you plunged your bare hands into a barrel full of pickles and pulled out what you needed. Germs, you say? I defy any known organism to survive in a decent brine.

The last pickle barrel I know of existed -- maybe still does -- at a tiny store/diner across the railroad tracks in Topeka where the Russian-American proprietor still made his own tangy dill pickles in a huge plastic trash barrel. If you wanted pickles with your sandwich -- and, of course, you did -- Mr. Porubsky would reach into the barrel and get you some. That was just a few years ago.

Here's the lesson one could learn from Mr. Porubsky: Sometimes no packaging is better than packaging that cannot be opened without the aid of dangerous kitchen implements.

Crackers? Once upon a time the general store had a big box of loose crackers, and you reached in and got however many you needed. This was long before crackers were packaged in individual boxes in plastic sleeves that defy any rational attempt to open them.

Germs? Look, it might do us all some good to be exposed to more germs instead of continually trying to create a germ-free world. Many of us have natural immunities to common germs because we worked in barns and chicken houses and gardens. We ate food that dropped on the floor. We drank rainwater collected from the roof of our house. We did not get sick. We got strong.

Let me buy AAA batteries by the handful. I'll put them in the old shoebox under the entertainment center so they'll be handy when one of the many remotes necessary for modern life suddenly stops working for lack of juice.

Yes, 27 million of us will steal those batteries. But those shoplifters are going to steal anyway. We're already paying for those losses.

Now make a bandage package I can easily open when my sliced finger is dripping bright red spots all over the kitchen counter and the tile floor. Please.

What a joyous Fourth of July we could all celebrate if we were free from plastic packaging.

By the way: I don't see many fireworks sold at the local stands encased in plastic. What does that mean?

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.