In the refrigerator sits a tempting jar of home canned peaches. You had a busy day at work, and the peaches would be a nice treat. Setting the jar of peaches on the counter, you find your favorite bowl and a spoon while your mouth waters in anticipation. It will be nice to just relax and enjoy the sweet fruit.

Grabbing the jar with enthusiasm and intention, the lid is stuck. It seems that bigger hands are required for the job but they are not home from work yet. Home canned anything never opens without a struggle. You have to earn your way in with ingenuity and perseverance. Give the thing a good honest twist before you give up. Putting a towel around the lid could give you a better grip. Well, it has worked before.

            Time to get serious and use those muscles. Put the jar between your knees and use both hands to twist the lid. Grunt a little, that always works in the gym. The jar just turns against cotton so you pull up your pant legs above your knees to get a better grip.  Give it a good quick twist, and now you have some strange marks on your knees. Explain them to your husband.

Tapping on the jar with the handle end of the knife worked for grandma. Tap tap tap ouch. This leaves you hanging onto the blade end. Grandma milked ten cows every day so she was tough enough to beat on jars holding onto a blade. You are not.

            Mom used to hold the jar upside down under hot running water. Don’t mind the water bill. Or that the water runs up your elbow and onto your new sweater, soaking it before you realize that water can run uphill. Maybe another twist would work now. But the jar is wet and the lid is wet, and those soft weak hands that never milked a cow are not even making an impression on the stuck lid.

There is one of those new fangled rubber grippy thingys in a drawer. It shouldn’t take you more than half an hour to find it. If it’s not in oven mitt drawer, it might be in the gadget drawer, or maybe it was accidently put in the junk drawer. The jar is still wet but go ahead and give the lid a twist anyway. It should come off now. Throw the stupid rubber thing in a drawer and slam the drawer.