what's with shrink wrap?

I've been busy pondering very important topics and issues today. High on my list is why shrink wrap exists. What a waste of plastic trees. Doesn't anyone care about how many plastic trees it takes to make shrink wrap? I'm concerned.

And I think shrink wrap was invented to frustrate the elderly. Pretty much everything you buy has a shrink wrap "envelope" or worse, a hard plastic "covering" that requires an entire set of Craftsman tools from Sears to open. Let's not stop with shrink wrap or plastic wrap, let's add those nuisance twisty ties and teeny-tiny screws used to keep items firmly secured to their cardboard backing--the screws for which no teeny-tiny screwdriver exists. I've been told that this is done to prevent thievery. Ha! People are not going to spend 20 minutes in the store, in full view of a security guard or camera, wrestling a package to the floor trying to remove the wrap or twisties or the screws. They'll just take the whole dang package and wait until they're home where they can open/unwrap/unscrew/untwist to their hearts content until they are able to extricate the treasured item from its "protective shield".

But back to the elderly. When you get old you can't see well. Your hands hurt and aren't so strong anymore. So there you are wanting to listen to Lawrence Welk's 1001 favorite bubble-brained hits and you can't get the shrink wrap off the CD. You've paid for the CD. You didn't steal it. Your stereo is waiting to launch it into the living room, polyester suit and all (Lawrence's suit, that is), but you can't get the wrapper off. You've tried scissors and now have a large gash in your thumb. You've tried a screw driver and have discovered just how dangerous a weapon that is as you remove it from the soft, fleshy part of your palm (and, yes, pretty much everything on the elderly is soft and fleshy). You've tried a BIC throw-away razor, but all you've done is shaved most of the hairs off your knuckles. Finally you riffle through the catch-all drawer and you reach past last year's dentures, your ball of rubber bands, and the coupon for the free mambo lessons you've been meaning to take as soon as your lumbago eases up, and voila, you find the knitting needle. You poke and poke and strain your eyes forcing you to use some Murine so you can see clearly and then you poke some more. Finally, you poke a very small hole in one corner and you feel like Secretariat being blanketed with roses at the end of a great race. Poke, poke, poke some more and you are able to grasp a very slender string of plastic between your shaky thumb and forefinger. Slowly you pull and the string becomes a hair and then disappears and the unveiling ceases. You turn on every light in the room, put your CD under the brightest bulb in the house (obviously, at this point, you don't feel like you are the brightest bulb) and you lick your fingers hoping that this little sliver of plastic will be caught in the strand of spittle. Two hours later, you have managed to turn the little sliver into a 1/16th of an inch strand and have a 2" long "opening" in the shrink wrap. You take a short nap, eat a cookie and drink some milk and then you're ready to conquer the task. Another hour passes and you have managed to remove that strand around the entire circumference of the CD and you tear away the remaining shrink wrap, triumphantly shouting "Huzzah!" You march over to the stereo, push the eject button and find out that what you have only plays tapes. I think it's time for another nap and perhaps afterwards a letter to your Congressional representative about the conspiracy theory of shrink wrapping and senior citizens. Lawrence will have to wait...