by Peggy Robin
Here's the headline: Tupperware, Food Container Pioneer, Files for Bankruptcy (NYT September 18 2024)
Reading that, I felt like the Wallace Shawn character in The Princess Bride: "Inconceivable!"
A world without Tupperware? What next? A world without Brillo? Saran Wrap?? Kleenex???!!
After getting over the initial shock, I realized, of course, food storage containers will always be with us. It's just that I call ALL food storage containers TUPPERWARE, including Rubbermaid, ZipLoc, Gladware, SnapWare, IKEA brand containers, and even those round, shiny black Chinese takeout containers with the snap-tight lids that have replaced those once-ubiquitous, iconic fold-up paper containers*.
To me, any plastic container with a strong lid is Tupperware, and the downfall of the company is not going to change that -- at least not for me.
While I'm at it, I will cop a plea to calling CVS "People's Drugstore" on occasion, and always referring to DCA as National Airport, even going so far as to correct others who call it "Reagan" by muttering, "It's still National to the people who live here" -- and calling all copiers "Xerox machines" (not that anyone still uses that antiquated office machine from the previous century).
Let me absolve myself of the charge of being a total stick-in-the-mud about names. I'm happy to discard ones with dishonorable associations -- so good riddance to all the Confederacy-loving tributes to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. And "Jackson-Reed" High School rolls off my tongue with pleasure.
I've long been a big advocate for dumping insulting names such as "Redsk**ns".
But the demise of Tupperware is a case of the exact opposite in action: By hanging on to "Tupperware" for all plastic storage containers, we continue to honor the legacy of Earl Silas Tupper, who turned an industrial waste product into these endlessly useful and resealable containers. So here's to Tupper, a name that will live forever in my refrigerator as long as I have leftovers to store!
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* You know, the white ones with a red pagoda on the sides and thin wire handles that always leaked the sauce all over the inside of the brown paper bag that carried the whole order. Ever forget to remove the wire handle before putting the container in the microwave? That's a mistake you will never make twice!
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Still Life with Robin is published on the Cleveland Park Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
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