Perspectives

Dear Heloise: As with most parents, mine ingrained in me the need to brush my teeth regularly. In spite of doing this twice a day, I still ended up with cavities. My dentist always encouraged me to floss, but even after I started doing this, I still had cavities.

Dear Heloise: The reader who suggested hitting a jar with a knife handle was correct, but tapping is a better word. I tried to teach a co-worker at a deli how to open large pickle jars. Two days later, I was called in to work at 6:30 a.m. unexpectedly. My coworker was taken to the hospital after she wacked a jar and cut her hand on broken glass. She didn’t understand that I tapped the lid. Or I use a bottle opener to ease the pressure and break the airtight seal. --AReader, in Richmond, Virginia SENDAGREAT HINT TO: Heloise@Heloise.com

Well new year, new me. A good saying to remember this coming year by Theodore Roosevelt “do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are”. That is a direct contradiction to what I mostly hear, “the world is a miserable place and there’s nothing I can do about It”. How about some New Year’s resolutions that you can actually keep to some extent. Social Scientists say most of these resolutions are abandoned after two weeks.