All was going well, when my life hit a snag. My zipper got stuck. Not just any zipper, but the coil zipper* on my beloved knapsack. It went forward. It did not go backward. The culprit: a plastic bag.
There are many reasons not to use plastic bags, and one that is never talked about is that it could snag your beloved knapsack zipper.
However, I had confidence. Because I recently solved The Case of the Missing Glass Case. And if I could do that, I could do anything.
Like any good surgeon, I needed appropriate tools. Mine were a small screwdriver, bobby pin, pencil, and flashlight.
I began by inserting the screwdriver into the zipper doohickey and wiggling it about to extricate extraneous bag bits. Next I used a bobby pin. It broke in half, which turned out to be a good thing; one half had a little hook and I could scrape away at the tiniest plastic pieces. Then I said, “Open wide and say ahh,” and shone a flashlight inside. It looked like I had taken care of the problem. But the zipper still wouldn’t work, so I consulted the oracle: a WikiHow article on unsticking zippers. It recommended rubbing a pencil inside the zipper and along the teeth. The graphite acts as a cleaner and rubs away the dirt.
Voila! My zipper worked. Backwards, forwards. Up and down. I felt quite zippy.
* Footnote: So that I could properly name the zipper type, I consulted a Source on the anatomy of a zipper. Just goes to show what a great surgeon I am.
Notes from the cupcake rescue league 
Whew! What a shock that a zipper didn’t do zip along. This is a blog that can be put into the Annals of Surgery on InanimateObjects,really so inanimate that the zipper couldn’t move a tiny bit. Congrats to the Surgeon in Chief!
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