OK, so you’re on your way home from the local Christian bookstore with your new CD. As you turn onto your road you steal a glance at that package of joy sitting in the passenger seat. “I’m gonna luv takin’ you for a spin,” you whisper under your breath. The moment you get indoors you rush, (CD in hand), to your CD player. As you close your eyes and hold the beloved plastic case up to your nose, you inhale that patented New CD Smell. Ahh – the wonder! And it’ll sound even better!
That is, if you can ever get the CD out of the case. The whole works is strangled in this transparent plastic wrap. You try tearing a slash through the front of it with your fingernail. Of course that is hopeless. Next you tackle the folded corners at the edge of the case. Ah ha! An edge is loose! …only to tear off and flutter to the floor. After another four such shreds follow suit you finally have enough stuff in your grip to rid the case of the evil wrapping. A good yank and off it comes. Well, that and a new crack appears in the oh-so-fragile front of the case. At least you are in!
“Ha, ha – who’s the boss now, huh! Huh?” The triumphant grin on your face quickly degenerates into a frown as you notice that your yet unspun disc lays trapped behind a freshness seal. The little strip of adhesive plastic running along the top edge of the case seems like it won’t even slow you down though. It even has instructions on where to pull to best remove the seal. So you follow the instructions, unwitting victim that you are. Just as a tinny shred of plastic tears off to firmly affix itself to your thumb you think you hear an evil cackle waft over your head. “Blasted seal,” you gripe and work at it with heightened zeal. The seal comes off at last, in approximately 32 individual slivers of sticky plastic.
By the time that infernal length of plastic is removed and cast aside your fingers are slick with sweat and about 98% of that new CD joy has evaporated. Granted, the CD sounds all the sweeter because of the struggle but really, who’s cruel joke was it to make getting at some good music so confounded difficult?