An Ode to Human Ingenuity

It's always puzzled me that one of the world's truly great inventions, Saranwrap, could be one of it's most flawed. It's a miracle that you can cover food in your refrigerator and still be able to identify it at least for the first two months, before everything begins to look like one of Alexander Fleming's early experiments. And unlike tinfoil, you can accidentally bite down on it without sending a charge through your fillings that zaps your brain. Here you have something that, in my opinion, outranks even the self starter and scissors, but to get it to do what it's supposed to you have to have four hands, one for each corner, to keep it from rolling into a static electricity-crackling ball. Every box comes equipped with a serrated edge that too often leaves you with a nasty cut on your finger. Even with it you can't tear off a big enough piece to cover more than a small bowl of peas insufficient for an entire helping or for kidding yourself into thinking you're being creative when all you've got for a salad is some wilted iceberg lettuce and a small glob of mayonnaise. I have it on good authority that a gizmo for tearing off flat sheets large enough to cover a whole roast suckling pig was conceived of by Leonardo da Vinci but he never built a working model. After all, it would be hundreds of years before Saranwrap was invented. And besides, he got sidetracked by the helicopter and ways to divert the Arno and flood Pisa so it could be conquered by the Medicis. Another great invention is the squeegee, to get the remains of the mayonnaise out of the jar.