What’s in the Box

Yesterday’s post was about my preference for a friend’s real memories over algorithmic memories from Google and Facebook.  My wife’s friend sent black raspberries…which led to me eating black raspberry ice cream.  Nice. But there was another gift inside that box.

What neither my wife’s friend nor Google, for that matter, know, of course, is about my fascination with packaging. Inside the box, I find, not the endlessly entertaining bubble wrap.  I could pop those bubbles for hours.  No, this package contains other amusements.  First, there’s the bubble wrap alternative.  A new green innovation. The cushions for the black raspberries, although they resemble styrofoam bricks, in fact are made of dissolvable material.  This is fun.  “Add water and watch the foam disappear.  It can be safely washed down the drain,” says the label.

How great is this?!  I tear the bricks into smaller pieces and set them in the sink.  Should I add hot water or cold?  I decide to go with the cold, keeping to the green theme.  I unleash the jets, and sure enough, the foam material melts, first into a glue-like liquid.  At first this concerns me.  It doesn’t look like something that should slip harmlessly down our drain.  But then, my worries and the gluey mixture melt to nothing but cloudy water.  This is so great.  I repeat the process five more times until nothing is left from the packing material.  That was fun.

But the entertainment has just begun.  Black raspberries are perishable, you know, and these black raspberries have journeyed all the way from the Pacific Northwest.  You know what that means.  Yes, refrigeration is necessary, and that, of course, means dry ice.  I reach into the box to retrieve my prize, remembering to handle it with care.  No freezer burns for me.  The packaging label says that I should set the dry ice aside where it will gradually dissipate.  

Really?  What a wasted opportunity that would be. “Do not go gently into that good night,” I declare as I set the package in the sink.  I carefully snip the plastic and, using tongs, I lift the dry ice from its container.  I discard the plastic and set the snowy block in the sink.  Then I start the slow trickle from the faucet.  It only takes a little, and the wispy mist begins to rise.  Soon it’s a full-blown fog bank rolling out of the vale.  It wafts up from the depths, curls around the counter, and overflows from the basin.  Farley, our innocent pandemic pup, has never seen this mysterious mist before.  He approaches cautiously, sniffs the clouds, and wags tentatively. 

We’ve caught him, the ice and I, in our tantalizing web of sublimation.  I increase the flow from the faucet, and the fog thickens.  It billows now, cascading over the counter, only to fade into oblivion.  We are mesmerized, Farley and I.  Transported by the intangible.   Floating in the cloud of nothingness.  Like the enjoyment we got from Seinfeld’s “show about nothing” in the 90s, now it’s the joy of nothingness in the 20s.

Yeah, that’s right Google.  I like packaging material and dry ice. And yes, I even took pictures.  

You’ll find them on my iCloud..and probably remind me about them in 2030. 

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