Stump the hardware guy

I was at the orthodontist’s office this morning with JJ paying a high price for a delightful thirty minutes of magazine browsing when I ran across an idea that I think is genius. A mom was talking about how she reduced the incidence of spilled drive-through milk containers in the back seat of the car by using a 1/4″ metal punch to put a hole through the plastic lid of  said containers and pushing a drinking straw through it thereby maintaining the original safety strip securely attaching the lid to the container and also allowing the kids to sip their beverage in a more controlled fashion.

I’d been having the same problem with the kids’ milk containers that we picked up when driving through Dunkin’ Donuts Whole Foods for their Sunday morning triple chocolate old fashioned quinoa salad and had almost given up asking for milk because a couple of the kids who shall remain nameless but they know who they are seemed to have an issue with keeping the lids on when they weren’t drinking.

I stopped by Ace Hardware to pick up the metal punch and since I’d never seen one or even knew how to describe them, I asked one of the handy dandy helpers to show me where they were and he asked, “What do you want to do with it?”

*sigh*

I wasn’t aware I needed an excuse to own one.

Or a license to operate it.

I told him and he looked at me as though I had three heads and then proceeded to spend the next ten minutes discussing with me how metal punches were designed to be used and that I was going to be using it for something that was clearly off-label and I was tempted to explain to him that Botox was used off-label as well but something told me that it would confuse him further so I chose to keep my mouth shut.

After convincing him that I did not mind spending $3.29 to see if it could save me a $100 detailing bill, I paid for the metal punch and walked out the door.

We were both shaking our heads.

Have a nice day.