Generally, I’m a fan of progress. Technological advancements are usually good, because they’re usually improvements, a way to make life easier, or at least less annoying. Text messaging allows me to communicate long-distance without sharing my conversation with everyone else in the grocery line. Electric toothbrushes make my dentist happy. Double-sided tape saves us from making endless tape loops to put a poster on the wall.

But there’s one so-called advancement that I protest. It has caused me nothing but frustration, heartache, and stinky hands. It is the “safe edge” can opener. I like to call it the can’t opener.

It’s not that I’m against safe edges (although I do think that people lacking the mental fortitude and foresight to grip a sharp metal disc anywhere but the sharp edge deserve what they get). My complaints with this nasty little device are threefold:

1. Eliminating the sharp edge on the lid means the sharp edge is merely relocated to the can itself. You’re cutting metal, folks. There’s gonna be a sharp edge somewhere.

2. The contraption is nigh impossible to use. I’m no Mensa member, but come on. It has no mechanics for gripping the can or the lid, and I don’t find it efficient to have to make five circuits to get one clean cut. At that point, I may as well be chewing through the can.

3. Since the lid is cut around the outer edge of the can, it becomes too big to fit inside for purposes of tidy disposal or draining liquid off tuna. Try it sometime, and see how much fun it is to be carefully wedging half of the lid into the can, pressing it against the tuna as well as can be done in such a situation, only to get drenched by tuna water shooting out the top side.

So I’ll leave this particular technological advancement to the people who can’t operate the good old fashioned can kind of opener. Then they can feel smart about not getting cut up, and I can feel smart about not smelling like tuna.