I suppose I may have spoiled my daughter, well, she was an only child for her first seven years, until her baby brother came along last year. I often find myself helping her to do things instead of teaching her the skills to do it for herself. Like opening things. Perhaps if she was left to fend for herself in the wild, she might develop skills to bite through the KitKat wrapper to get to the chocolate, or try stamping on a packet of crisps to get to the bag’s tasty contents. Instead she’ll just hand the packet to me and whine, ‘Mum, will you open this?’ And so I’ll open it for her.
School packed lunches are a problem. She’ll eat the sandwich, and the apple, and for some reason she can always get into a cheesey string… but I’ll check her lunch box after school and find the wrapped stuff still wrapped. She’ll try and fail to get into the packets. It’s not entirely her fault. There are all kinds of healthy fruit-based bars designed for packed lunches these days, but they’re nearly always wrapped in tough foil that even grown-ups find tricky to open. So… my first invention-of-the-day is a device for kids to help open packeted stuff in their lunch boxes.
Of course it would have to be safe, no sharp edges… I’d imagine the main market for this gizmo would be kids new to school who are still used to their Mum’s helping them get into their mini-bags of apricots and such like.
I went to a Tuppaware party once and didn’t buy any of the plastic on offer, but I came away with a free gift – an orange opener. It was just a short stick of plastic with a thick sharp lip for scoring your orange skin. I think something similar might just perforate packed-lunch packets. Or alternatively it could be a tiny springed hole-punch like device, with the plastic in animal shapes.
Of course this is just a place for ideas, I’m not going to actually make a proto-type packed-lunch packet perforator. But if anyone out there wants to make this, or knows where one is available please let me know.
I still taunt my daughter each day with those unopenable chocolate biscuits, I keep hoping one day she’ll find a way in. Or at the very least learn to ask, ‘Will you open this, please.’
