reprobate

Remember in the summer when you were a kid and your dad would turn to you and say "Go out and get the grill started or I'll give you something to really cry about"?

Ok, so maybe your parents weren't tough love pioneers, but chances are you've barbecued at one point or another. Charcoal, not that pussy propane shit. You'd go out there with a new bag of briquettes, peel back the tape and confront the string.

You know that little chain-stitched string that if you yanked it right would fall away like magic but if not you'd be there like a six year old with wet shoelaces until you finally gave up and went inside and got a steak knife. The string that was the nemesis that stood between you and the eyebrow removing "Just a little more lighter fluid" fireball. The string that had to be defeated before sumptuous, warm on the outside, frozen on the inside cheeseburgers.

I owned that string. I spent a lifetime mastering it. It was my string bitch.

I just went outside, as many times before, with a new bag of Kingsford, peeled back the tape and no string. They've replaced with some weird perforation thing that locks the paper through the holes it makes.

I've been made redundant by technology.