pull tab dependency

today, i had the embarrassing realization that i do not know how to use a can opener. it's actually something i've known for a while, what with it being a skill i've never needed thanks to the electric one my mom bought online, the prevalence of pull tabs on canned foods, and my lifelong lack of cooking skills that i'm only recently trying to rectify. i have a hazy recollection of the one in our kitchen drawer of my childhood apartment, stored alongside our regular silver cutlery and wooden utensils, being broken, but i can't remember why we didn’t just throw it out.

struggling with the can of organic, no salt added, whole kernel corn (most of these descriptors mean nothing to me, but that's what was on the shelf at walmart), i have to wonder if this one is broken, too, so i switch the one with the purple plastic handles and dial for the smaller, simpler one in the drawer, which must also be broken because i still can't get it to work.

my recently acquired education degree left me with many things: a state teaching license i won't be putting to use (at least not this year), 27,000 dollars of federal student loan debt, and a deeply-held belief that people don't know what they don't know, and there's no point in shaming them about it. yet i often fail to not judge myself for my lack of practical skills. i'm not completely inept, but i can't stop myself from lamenting the fact that historically, people my age and younger were doing backbreaking labor from sun up to sun down, participating in social movements that upended seemingly indestructible hegemonic structures, leaving their homes and families to travel to unknown lands in search of better lives—meanwhile, i can't get basic tasks done without an external source, like a teacher or boss, looming over me with their expectations and instructions. i can't use a simple can opener.

i know i can't be alone, especially as millions of people my age transition out of college life and into the uncensored "real world" that's been looming since we started slowly gaining independence from our parents during our adolescence, but i feel so behind. a few years ago, i went through a period of time where, partially due to the pandemic and partially due to my anxious nature, the progress i had made around doing things alone without my inner middle schooler fearing that i was unsafe and that everyone was staring at me (or actively plotting my demise) took a nosedive.

bat the worst of it, i considered myself a diet agoraphobe. walking down the street in broad daylight left my stomach lurching, and i was convinced that anyone i encountered outside of the dorm room-library-lecture hall circuit i was comfortable with could smell the fear and inexperience on me, so i put events in my calendar i knew i'd never go to, picked up meals to take back to my dorm rather than sit alone in the dining hall, and jumped at the chance to go home for the weekend as soon as my final class let out on fridays.

by my final year, the terror of harboring even more regrets about missing out on the remainder of my college experience kickstarted a kind of desensitization therapy, and i rereached and even surpassed the level of engagement with the wider world that i had before this phase. in that sense, i feel more capable, but i'm still in an era of life where i'm able to return to the comfort of my parents' house, where i don't pay bills and am able to slough off a major chunk of the responsibilities i'd otherwise have. and as nice as it is to have this security, part of that feels shameful.

the shame doesn't serve me or anyone in different circumstances for that matter. i'm trying to convert it into forward momentum, using it as a catalyst to learn the skills that will make me a "real adult." starting with using a can opener—which, after a two second glance from my mom, turns out to actually be broken. once that one is tossed, she takes the functional one and shows me where i went wrong with my solo attempt, and i gain one more practical skill to add to my roster.