According to seasonal party poopers, this is the last weekend of summer vacation.  What this really means is that starting next week, after Labor Day, vacation rentals slow down as families migrate from the beach to the school-supply aisles at Staples.

This hardly seems like a good reason to terminate warm weather fun.  But being that Labor Day has officially been designated as the last gasp of summer, I think it is an appropriate time to reflect on that forgotten hero of all summer festivities:  the bottle opener.

OK, ice cubes and hot dog buns are right up there too, but you don’t find those things folded into a pocket knife or attached to a key chain, now do you.

Here is what I like about the bottle opener:  it doesn’t have moving parts.  It doesn’t require batteries.  There is no user manual.  You don’t have to call India if it breaks.  And it isn’t shrink-wrapped in nuclear plastic.

The bottle opener is wireless, it always works, and, best of all, it seems like it could have been invented in New Jersey.  But it wasn’t.  The bottle opener was invented in Baltimore in the late 1800s by William Painter, an Irish immigrant, patent number 5142000.

However, as an unreliable Internet journalist I don’t have a problem erroneously suggesting that the inspiration for the bottle opener was born out of necessity at the Jersey Shore after Mr. Painter discovered that he had no way of lifting bottle caps off  celebratory beer and soft drink bottles.  You see, Mr. Painter had invented the Crown bottle cap just months earlier, at the start of summer, patent number 464258.

It sounds plausible.  And I think his wife invented the manicure on Labor Day after she came up with idea for pop top tabs the previous Memorial Day.

So as we toast the end of summer, even if it is a bit premature, let us not forget the invention that made EnJay famous.

The light bulb.

Contributor John Christmann’s weekly humor column, Dad In The Box, can be found online at www.thealternativepress.com or on his website www.dadinthebox.com . You can fill up his inbox at john.christmann@dadinthebox.com

I am one of those people who can’t sit down. Unless I am already sitting down, in which case I am one of those people who can’t stand up. This is probably why I am stuck in a lawn chair right now with large drops of water dripping onto my leg from the outside of my lemonade glass. What do they call that again?

The kids are lying out on the lawn with their heads together imagining shapes in the clouds. After they spot one that looks like my nose, they want something to do. They are bored listening to the crickets sing.

Not me. I love listening to the crickets. It reminds me of a gentler time, when life was simple and so was I. As opposed to now, when life is not so simple and I still am.

I remember drifting aimlessly in a tire swing suspended from the thick, strong arm of a giant oak in my friend’s backyard. The grass beneath the tree struggled to grow because there was so much shade.

“I could devote my whole life to doing nothing,” my friend said.

I spun slowly around on the tire swing looking at the kaleidoscope sky through the dark green leaves high over my head. I thought about this until I got dizzy and felt like getting sick. How exactly does someone devote their whole life to doing nothing? What is it they are doing when they are not doing anything? Don’t they get bored?

“Does spinning on a tire swing count as something?” I asked.

My friend was resting at the base of the tree with a long piece of wild grass in his mouth. He didn’t answer, I guess because he was too busy doing nothing. Many years later he would run a large corporation that manufactured floating lawn furniture and would be too busy to return my emails.

Condensation! That’s what they call it. It’s when the swollen air reaches the dew point around a cool object and releases all its moisture.

Well, I guess it is time to standup and do something.

NJ My Way Contributor John Christmann’s weekly humor column, Dad In The Box, can be found online at www.thealternativepress.com or on his website www.dadinthebox.com . You can fill up his inbox at john.christmann@dadinthebox.com