What is the most important invention since sliced bread? The squeezable ketchup bottle, of course. Or is it?
We like squeezable ketchup because we like our French fries hot. One quick squeeze and the fries are doused, ready for munching. We don’t have time to wait for the red guck to glug out of a glass bottle anymore.
The classic TV commercials for Heinz (or was it Hunts) played the Carole King song “Anticipation” while showing ketchup moving with agonizing slowness down the neck of a glass ketchup bottle.
what made that commercial work was sticking together a feel good song and taste good condiment which made us forget the hassle of getting ketchup onto fries in a timely manner by a fault in condiment container design and implementation. It wasn’t a problem of lack of technology. You could go into a restaurant and squeeze your ketchup (and mustard) from a plastic bottle that the waitresses would slowly fill every morning from the original glass bottle. Let her wait, I want it now! It took the cold fries of some ketchup container engineer to eliminate the waitress and sell ketchup in a squeezable plastic bottle. Eliminate the wait. Clean your plate. No time to hesitate.
If ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise (yuck) and even grape jelly are available in such quick and easy to use squeeze bottles why would they even to bother selling glass bottles of the stuff? It goes back to Carole King’s song, "Anticipation". Even in our hurry up I need it now lives we still like to anticipate some things. Take Christmas for example. We wait all year for Holloween to hurry up and get over with (unless you are a pagan) so we can get on with anticipating the arrival of Christmas. We order junk we don’t need through catalogs, the internet or on TV so we can anticipate its arrival in a box on our doorstep.
Usually the anticipation of something feels better than the actual item or event. We anticipate the new 52" high definition plasma TV Aunt Martha is going to give us for Christmas, but we get socks instead. We long for the arrival of the E-bay auction only to find that Elvis' gold ring is actually Elva's old bling. There are, of course, exceptions. For Christians, being in heaven is far better than the anticipation of it. If you are sick, being well is better than getting well.
When we are obliged to wait we make of it what we can, but when we have a choice, why wait, even if we are sentimental about 70’s love ballads. Getting ketchup onto our fries leaves us options. Why would I choose to wait for ketchup to slowly sludge its way from a glass bottle when I have the choice to take a shortcut with a quick squeeze?
Waiting can have its own mental benefits, even if we don't always have the choice. If you obsess about your fries getting cold while shaking a bottle, then anticipation is detrimental to your mental health. If, however, you enjoy the time you spend waiting on Christmas relishing how happy your nephew will be with a new 52” plasma TV you are mentally healthy.
Given a choice between enjoying the wait and can’t wait to get it over, most people choose to get it over with quickly and lose out on any missed benefits of embracing the wait. Take for instance revenge. Revenge is a dish best served cold, is it not? How about getting old? We can’t avoid it, but aging gracefully is better than worrying about something we can’t avoid… (unless we burn up before we burn out) but that takes me off the subject… as if I was sticking to the subject anyway!
But sticking to the subject, or sticking to the bottle in this case, is really what sticking it out it is all about. Carole King says, “Anticipation, is making me late, is keeping me wai-ai-aiting”. Ketchup stuck in a bottle is making me wait. FedEx is making me wait (but not more than 24 hours). Christmas is December 25th, not tomorrow (unless it is Dec. 24th and then it still seems like it takes forever to get here).
But, good old Carol has obviously spent some time with French fries and put her sticking time to good philosophical use when she finished the song with,
“And tomorrow, we might not be together
I'm no prophet, Lord I don't know nature's ways
So I'll try and see into your eyes right now
And stay right here, 'cause these are the good old days”.
So, the next time I am sticking it to my ketchup bottle by pounding on the little Heinz logo on the neck of the bottle to make it flow faster like the urban legend contends, I will let my fries cool a little and anticipate the virtue of sticking it out.
A Robservation
* The word ketchup comes from the Chinese kêtsiap, meaning a fermented fish sauce, probably via the Malay word kechap, now spelled kecap, which means soy sauce. The word was brought back to Europe by Dutch traders who also brought the oriental sauce itself.
2 comments:
The truth behind "squeeze" condiments:
Yes, these items were discovered, developed and delivered to your table by a woman. You see, it all started one Saturday morning as she sat eating her breakfast at the local Cracker Barrell. Two tables over sat a family of three, well rounded individuals. The mother and father sat in the chairs on one side of the table and the daughter, which seemed to be about 10 yrs of age, sat across from them. Now, to explain this further, the mothers right side touched the wall of the building and her left side was pressed against her life long love, his left side stuck out beyond the table. The daughter had no problem filling her chair either!
At any rate, their food was delivered and the family began to eat like slopped pigs. Then it happend. The little girl picked up her butter knife and licked it from end to end. Reached for the bottle of Heinz, slowly twisted the top off and tilted the bottle. Then she inserted her freshly licked butter knife into the bottle and scooped the red sauce onto her eggs. She then set the bottle back onto the table, and licked the knife once again from end to end.
I sat in amazement watching the family as they ate. I just had to stay until the table was cleaned for the next guest. As I had expected, the table was cleared. The Heinz bottle was capped and returned to it's spot along with the salt and pepper. Within minutes a new family was sitting at the table. The Heinz bottle just dripping with the obese girls germs all swimming around in it's rich red sauce.
I could kiss the feet of the woman that developed the "squeeze" bottle of ketchup I now find on my table at Cracker Barrell.
LOVE IT...I especially love the illustrations for your blog entries...you are the best Robservation ever!
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