BY MARGO D. BELLER

Many years ago, when my uncle and aunt would visit, they would come to breakfast with one of those large pill organizers, the kind with seven compartments labeled with the day of the week. They had to be careful to take the right pill in the right order at the right time, and make sure the right person took the right pill.

I used to chuckle at this. Now my husband and I do the same thing.

I’ve learned that there’s now nothing as mortifying to someone who’s young at heart as trying to open a pill bottle.

When MH and I travel, we have a smaller version of the seven-day pill organizer. I can fit many days’ worth of pills in those compartments – daily vitamins, calcium supplements, iron pills, thyroid pills. But we also need separate bottles for MH’s joint pills, and our fish oil supplements.

It’s a lot of pills.

In our youth, we got by with a daily vitamin. Then I had to start taking the thyroid pill. Then, over time, I needed iron for anemia; calcium for the bones. I started us on fish pills to make up for the fish I don’t often make for supper. MH’s joint pills came after a friend of ours told him how much they helped her sore knees. MH, with his own sore knees, swear they are helping.

MH and I are in reasonably good health, but it can be a struggle to get down some of the larger pills. It’s all over-the-counter stuff, except for the thyroid medicine.

All, however, have varying degrees of hassle attached to trying to get the bottles open the first time.

I understand it’s important to keep drugs, even vitamin supplements, from being compromised, and away from small children. People have died from tampering with everyday stuff, so make it harder to open the bottle.

Still, when I try to wrap my hands around a “tamper-proof, child-proof” cap, I want to scream.

The other day I had to open another new bottle of the thyroid pills. Press down, turn the cap – I’m used to that now. I can do it. But this time, there was something else under the cap – an “easy open” seal.

This was no easy-open seal.

Bad enough I have to turn to MH for help in opening jars that prove resistant to my efforts. That’s humbling. But being unable to pull apart an “easy open” seal? What the hey?

Finally, in frustration, I pushed down hard enough to break the seal – not exactly the way it was intended to be opened – and I could get to the pills.

It’s not just pills. Try to open a sealed, “easy-open,” package of cheese or dried cranberries lately? It’s ain’t easy, and won’t get easier.

I know there is no magic pill to restore the suppleness of a younger body, or to help me lose weight without eating less. But I could sure use one to strengthen my hands.

Presuming I could get the bottle open.