Cold pancakes. I felt like a maroon

This morning Pat said from the dining room, hot pancakes on her plate, "What's keeping you so long?"

From the kitchen I said, "The syrup isn't coming out."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I realized I was an idiot... again.

Remember the first time you tried to get ketchup from a bottle that came factory-fitted with an airtight seal hidden under the cap? Remember smacking it, shaking it, smacking it, cursing it, smacking it again and again until someone suggested you remove the cap and peal off the next new thing... a foil seal? I do. It was summer 1998 and I was on the back deck with a burger on my plate but had the ketchup bottle in my hand, just seconds away from throwing it over the back fence. Pat stopped me and saved $2.99 from going to waste.

It wasn't the last time I was made to feel like an idiot by some modification to a grocery item. Zip lock bags stymied me for a while. There are still some I can't open. I have packets of cheese slices at the back of the fridge to prove it. And this bottle of PC pancake syrup - purchased just the other day - caught me unawares. But just for a sec.

I'd been thinking of something else at the time. About how I changed my wifi modem yesterday and couldn't connect to the interweb until I'd travelled the confusing path of numerous phone calls and eventually, long after supper had gone cold, talked to a fourteen-year old who could snap his fingers and make it work.

"Thanks, sir," I said. Felt like a maroon.

But I'm learning. I'm in a new world this morning with syrup, finally, on my cold pancakes.

Photo by GH

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