White Guy Problems

I once had a cartoon over my desk titled “White Guy Problems”, and the picture was of a guy spilling his latte on his suede jacket while driving. I guess I have to look no further than the Wall Street Journal for other white guy problems:

Problem: You packed a bottle of wine for the picnic, but forgot the corkscrew.

Solution: It’s an unthinkable predicament among some instructors at the Sommelier Society of America in New York, but they came up with two options. The first involves driving the cork into the bottle. “Use a narrow, cylindrical thing — a tube of [lip balm] … or the handle of a wooden spoon — and gently, slowly push it down into the bottle,” says Anne Woods, the organization’s assistant to the chairman. “Then you have to be creative when you pour it,” because when you tip the bottle to pour, the cork will block the flow of wine. So you’ll need something long and skinny — the spoon handle again or a skewer — to hold the cork back as you pour. The second method: If you happen to have a screw — preferably one with large threads like the kind used in woodwork — it could work like a corkscrew with the help of a screwdriver, Ms. Woods says. Once you’ve screwed the hardware into the cork, use pliers to slowly wriggle the cork out of the neck. The Sommelier Society instructors admit this is the more difficult of the two methods.

My problem is more basic – what to do in a motel room when you don’t have a beer opener. We had this problem once, and I went down the the lounge to ask for an opener. The bartender had only one – a lethal looking combination knife/corkscrew/opener, and she begged me to return it when we left, and I promised I would. The day we left I put it in my jacket pocket to drop off downstairs, and then promptly forgot. When we arrived at the airport and had to put all our belongings in the basket for the screener, there I was with a nasty looking knife/corkscrew. It was confiscated. I’m sure now I’m on a watch list, this country being paranoid and all.