#1213 Hefty Loc

Thousands of years from now, future archeologists will turn to the landfills of the 20th and 21st centuries for clues about our culture.
And when they do, they will no doubt conclude that the single biggest symbol, of what we were and what we do, was the Hefty One-Zip plastic storage bag.
It is the epitome of our cultural development. A cheap plastic bag with a built-in plastic zipper on top. Because we need something to store stuff in. And it has to be convenient and catchy and quick.
And lord knows, it’s way too difficult to go to all the trouble of pressing the top of an ordinary ziplock bag together with our fingers. We want a fused-on built-in slider to zip that ziplock for us.
Worse, it’s likely we will never eat the leftover we are saving. And that the only green result of this plastic monstrosity’s carbon footprint intensive manufacturing is that the leftovers inside will turn green from mold, mildew or sundry refrigerator bacterial depredations.
Those sodden remains will be tossed, bag and all, and eventfully petrify for the future archeologist to try to figure out. Maybe his or her advanced chemical scanner will be able to determine the exact recipe of the desiccated tuna surprise inside.
But the bag itself will tell a larger story. The story of a culture that once invented the Lunchable, that over-packaged and segmented cracker, cheese and pudding holder that saved a generation of on-the-go single parents from having to expend all the effort of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for their children’s school lunch.
The story of a culture whose most amazing purveyor of packagability was Steve Jobs. Who repackaged our computers with ever-easier interfaces. From Macs and mouses and icons to click on, to iPods and iPhones and touchy-feely screens, to unfortunately named devices reminiscent of feminine hygiene products.
They were great at packaging, the archeologists might conclude, but not so good when it came to naming. IPads were bad enough, but why did they name a plastic bag so it sounds like overalls for the overweight?
Truly, the “Hefty One-Zip” takes the cake.
America, ya gotta love it.