I’m madder than the bereaved widow who had to cancel her diamond anniversary because her beloved died of a heart attack while trying to open up a bottle of aspirin over how hard it is to open up a simple bottle of aspirin.
Look, you all know that they don’t call ol’Carmine “ol’Carmine” for nothing — I’m old! And as such, I make sure that I have a cornucopia of life-saving devices and elixirs on me at all times. Defibrillator? Check. Tracheotomy kit? Check. Copy of that old poster on how to do the Heimlich Maneuver? You betcha!
But the most basic item that I keep in my trusty sidekick Tornardo’s satchel is an everyday bottle of aspirin, which I heard someone on the radio once say I should pop open anytime I get a pain in my chest, or when I get that annoying tingling sensation in my left wing.
Now, I would like to say that the aspirin has in fact saved my life a number of times when my precious blood needed some thinning, but I can’t. You know why? Because I can’t open the bottle!
That’s right! I can’t open the bottle! And that makes my precious blood boil!
A case in point was last Sunday night. I had one of those headaches I get when I when I eat too much beef and broccoli, so I reached over to grab newly purchased bottle of 100-count genuine Bayer coated aspirin in a plastic bottle (I get the coated kind because it is kinder on my stomach).
What happened next was two-hour war between man and child-safety caps. Well, make that two hours and 16 minutes to be exact. And if it had taken a minute longer, it would have ended with me taking an ax to the bottle!
So I’ve got a message to those nitwits at Bayer who put together these bottles, and my five-point plan will help keep people alive.
Point number 1: Old people with pounding headaches are taking aspirin, so make sure the labels on the bottles are readable by old eyes that are dealing with a pounding sensation right behind them. The writing on these bottles is unreadable by the best of eyes, so we can’t even read the instruction on how to get the cap off.
Point number 2: The customer-service number needs to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You know something? Headaches don’t take weekends off! And neither should your service reps. I need someone at the ready to talk me off the ledge when my head is pounding and that bottle won’t open.
Point number 3: Get rid of those stupid notes that fold off the bottle. It’s bad enough I can’t read what’s on the label, but what makes it worse is the fact that I have to peel off the label to find the buried treasure that is the proper dosage. And that’s also too hard to read!
If Bayer can fix those things, I’ll be a happy camper. But in the meantime, let me tell you what it took to finally get the cap off so I could get the relief I so deserved. I used a 5x magnifying glass, a couple of flashlights, before I finally realized the directions were in raised letters on the cap: “Push and turn to open.”
I tried it, and all that happened was that I got an imprint of the directions on my hand, like that guy in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”
So I ended up using the ax!
But I guess it doesn’t matter if I ever take that medicine, because even if I didn’t I couldn’t get into my doctor’s offices because it is not handicap acceptable.
Look, I don’t need to tell you that I use my scooter Tornado to survive because I cannot walk or stand. So when I go see a doctor, why must I climb a flight of stairs? Shouldn’t there be some sort of law that demands doctor’s offices must be handicapped acceptable? I called my boss Assemblyman William Colton to find out if the state could draft such a law, and he told me that many doctors offices were grandfathered in, so they don’t have to. So my family doctor, who has my medical records for the past 20 years (dating back to when I could walk), doesn’t have to put in a ramp for yours truly. Worse, he doesn’t have any parking!
So if I sound a tad bitter, perplexed, and angry or disgusted you know why. I hate Doctors and the entire medical industry!
Screech at you next week — if I survive!
Read Carmine Santa Maria's screech every Sunday on BrooklynPaper.com. Contact him at [email protected].
