Clamshell Plastic Packaging

I thought I’d start this off with a pretty standard item that seems utterly hell-bent on giving me an anxiety disorder, and of course the first thing that popped into my mind was Clamshell Plastic Packaging.  For those who think they aren’t familiar with “Clamshell Plastic Packaging”, I’ve included a photograph and short hypothetical to refresh and stimulate your memories.

RECOGNIZE ME? I'M ABOUT TO RUIN EVERYTHING ABOUT YOUR DAY.

Picture it: You slowly rouse yourself out of a fitful night of sleep as the sun’s dawn-light beams slide gracefully into your room between the cracks in your curtains.  But alas!  Waking up alive is not the horrible misfortune it usually is on other mornings because this morning it’s . . . Christmas!  Within in seconds, you’re sprinting full-speed at the corpse of a tree standing in your living room, and, skidding to a halt, you lunge at the first poorly wrapped gift with the ferocity of an African child seeing food for the first time.  Clawing off the wrapper you find just the thing you’ve always wanted . . . a brand new Tamagotchi**.  It’s just sitting there, sparkling underneath its hard plastic shell, begging to be turned on, to be fed, to be loved - begging for LIFE.

But unfortunately, after fifteen pointless minutes of clawing at the shell of that casing, you’re still no closer to your baby Tamagotchi than that African child is to a Big Mac.  You lie in a lifeless pile of misery on the floor, openly weeping, your fingers sliced and bleeding from plastic paper-cuts.  Your parents eventually come downstairs to find you dead from blood loss – the Clamshell Plastic Packaging lay menacingly next your body, waiting for its next victim.  And at your funeral your father’s speech talks about how promising your life would have been had you not met your untimely end via a manufacturer’s decision to encase Tamagotchi’s in a vacuum sealed plastic coffin that would absolutely decimate your nubile skin as you tried to open your new toy, causing the fatal loss of blood that resulted in you having your own coffin (only this one is made of wood).  Under his lawyers advisement, your father vows to avenge your death by suing National Plastics, Inc. (yes, I Googled “Who manufactures Clamshell Plastic Packaging . . . this hypothetical situation requires utmost accuracy), who settles out of court for over a million dollars in order to keep the whole thing quiet.  But all the money in the world won’t bring you back to life.

Back in the present day, we see Clamshell Plastic Packaging (CPP) everywhere, and I’m left wondering whether or not the entire appeal of CPP is some sort of unconscious expression of societal masochism.  We must want to punish ourselves to badly that even after months of saving up for some pricey, three inch by one inch designer electronic whatever we put it in a package that we cannot physically open on our own.  Even scissors can barely do the job:

CPP: 1, SCISSORS: PWNED

In fact, unless you own a hacksaw, or know a friend who knows a guy who sells some black market knives that cut through cans (and bones), it’s pretty safe to say you’re never going to be able to break through the impenetrable fortress that is CPP.  And it’s not just that mutant hybrid of secret agent government plastic that’s the problem – it’s also the fact that everything packaged in CPP is air sealed in there, cryogenically frozen in the Plastic-Time continuum that Stephen Hawking was writing his next book about when he died (Editor’s note: Stephen Hawking isn’t dead.  Yet.). 

It’s just that, why?  Why are we doing this to each other, and (more importantly) to ourselves?  What is the point of Clamshell Plastic Packaging – what does it want from us, and why is it here? Is this Ancient Aliens technology, meant to teach us a lesson about consumerism and letting that damn kid in Africa starve while we buy USB ports and/or Tamagotchis and drink Big Mac Smoothies?  I wish I could give answers to even just one of these questions, but for now the only thing I know for certain is that Clamshell Plastic Packaging is slowly ruining my life.

**Do people still have Tamagotchis?  Is a Tamagotchi an acceptable Christmas gift?  Once, I was supposed to be watching my friend’s Tamagotchi, and I let it die because I forgot to clean its poop for an hour, and of COURSE I couldn’t find a fucking pencil to press into that little back button so I could restart it and pretend nothing had ever happened.  When I gave it back to her I didn’t even say anything, just stared at my feet and handed it to her, and then ran away before she could get mad at me (Freudian impacts on my current interpersonal relationships).  She took it pretty hard and refused to acknowledge my existence for a week after that, which is at least three months in third grade terms.  I’m sorry I killed your Tamagotchi, Holly.  If I knew where you lived/whether or not you were still alive, I’d totally mail you a Tamagotchi for Christmas.