Remember when Chuck Heston found the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand on The Planet of the Apes and we all gasped at the surprise ending?  Of course, it was a blatant set up for a sequel, since they never explained how those apes had managed to travel to earth, steal the Statue of Liberty, and bring it back to their strange and frightening planet.

Back when I first saw the film, I was just a child.  I was gullible, the way children tend to be, so this film worked for me.  It wasn't too big a stretch to believe that apes could run society, since, as far as I could tell, adults didn't have a whole lot going that apes couldn't manage.

Now I'm an adult, at least chronologically, and I can no longer suspend my disbelief long enough to get through the first scene of apes running things.  I'll tell you why.  Apes don't invent new ways to open beer.

Seriously, if you give an ape a beer today, he'll open it by smacking it on a rock, or just prying the cap off with his brutish, pre-historic strength.  In other words, he'll do it the same way his primordial ancestors did.  It's sad, really.  

That's not true of man, though.  I was recently at a family reunion, where, thanks to the thoughtfulness of my wife, I was the envy of all I surveyed because I was wearing flip-flops with bottle openers incorporated into the bottom of the shoes!  Well, I was the envy of much I surveyed.  It would have been all, had my niece (who is underage, for crying out loud) not also been wearing a pair.  

Can you imagine an ape coming up with such an ingenious device?  No.  No you can't.  I'm not even sure I can figure out how people came up with this.  Obviously, it was a couple guys.  Women don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about opening beer, in my experience.  So you have these guys, and they're sitting out on a patio, let's say, faced with a couple unopened beers.  The bottle opener sits preposterously far away, in the kitchen.

"We could just hit them against the barbeque pit," offers one. 

"What, are we apes now?" would be the reply.

So a philosophical and scientific discussion ensues.  After several hours, and, more importantly, several beers, it is decided that what the world needs is a wearable bottle opener.  Granted, the key chain bottle opener was a wonderful innovation, but the fact is that when you haven't left your home, chances are you won't be carrying your keys.  No, what you need is an opener that you're more likely to have on you at all times, since one can never know when you'll be faced with an unopened beer.

I'm sure the prototype was underwear.  Everyone wears underwear.  Except guys who "go commando".  However, those guys usually are the same guys who open beers with a couple of their remaining teeth.  After a couple unfortunate incidents and snarky comments from emergency room personnel, the bottle opener underwear was abandoned.  I don't know how many versions they went through before they arrived at flip flops, but the important thing is that they did it.

And that's why you can grab a few beers and walk down to the lake to join your thirsty friends.  What you do is offer them a beer and then allow them to struggle to open it.  It's important that you be patient here, for maximum effect.  You must wait for one of them to come up with a witty barb - probably equating your intelligence to a piece of petrified cow dung - for walking all the way down there without an opener.

That's when you pull off your sandal and open everyone's beer.  They'll drink in stunned silence, with the full knowledge that you are the alpha male.  Your beer will never taste better.

And it'll never occur to them to question the hygiene of allowing your shoe - the same shoe you have been wearing on your feet, while you walk on the ground, including the ground in the bathroom - to come in direct contact with the surface of their bottle.  

Like I said, it's pretty much a guy invention.