Corn-fused, road rage DNA & running w/scissors

Dear Rachel,
Honey, I’m corn-fused. I have been jarring for more than 50 years my pickles, beets, corn and other veggies. Why do all you young folks keep calling it canning? I do not use a can and don’t even know why you call it that. Hope you can help me. Do you young’ins can or jar?  Is there a video on using a can instead of a jar?
– Aunt Millie

Dear Can’t-Do Attitude,
Sweetie, the only thing jarring here is your sense of time. You can’t pin this one on the young’ins. Food preservation has always been called canning, and always will be called canning. You’ve been canning for a full 25% of the time since canning was invented, so you ought to know better. Canning is also called “putting up,” which coincidentally is what the kids these days do to people like you (and, increasingly, like me). 
– Uncanny, Rachel

Dear Rachel,
Why do people feel the universal need to speed up when you try to pass them on the road? They were perfectly content going five miles under, until you affront them with the suggestion you might want to go the speed limit. That’s when they gun it. Then you end up stuck in the passing lane in a dick-comparing contest with a tiny man in a big Ram until the oncoming semi forces you back into your lane. Hypothetically speaking. Is there something in our genes that forces this behavior?
– Passing Fancy

Dear Rarin,
I’m reminded of the golden retriever my parents had when I was a kid. That dog would choke himself to be the one in front on a walk. Take him out by himself and he was fine – so long as he was in front of you. Take him out with another dog, and he would literally rather die of asphyxiation than fall behind, so long as he was in front when he kicked it. 
– Man’s best friend, Rachel

Dear Rachel,
How are scissors handed, and why doesn’t it work when I try to cut a different direction other than straight ahead of me? It’s a simple mechanism. Two blades come together to cut something. It shouldn’t matter which fingers are doing it and which direction they’re pointing. But I couldn’t cut my way into a plastic bag just now, until I repositioned everything. What gives?
– Limping with Scissors

Dear Rounded Tips,
There are two types of people in the world: right-handed ones, and everyone else. Lefties using scissors actually push the blades apart, so they don’t cut clean and they don’t cut at all. I suppose it’s the same if you turn the scissors around. The only thing for it is to give up who you really are and teach yourself to do things with the world-dominant hand. I mean, unless you want to be the kind of person walking around with a muscly left hand and calling things “jarring” all the time.
– Cutting right to it, Rachel

Got a burning question? Email Rachel at telegraph@durangotelegraph.com