I have just started reading The Final Days by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, a tale of the last one hundred days of the Nixon Administration and I came across this little tidbit..

On April 25, 1973, H. R. Haldeman asked Steve Bull, in charge of maintaining the White House taping system, to retrieve several reels that contained conversations between John Dean and the President. He had to go to great lengths to show Mr. Nixon how to play those tapes because the President was a klutz.



After four years of handing out souvenir presidential favors of cufflinks, tie clasps, pens and golf balls, Nixon still required assistance to open the cardboard boxes. Bull was accustomed to providing such help. Once, the President had called him in to open an allergy-pill bottle, which Nixon had been struggling with for some time—the childproof type of bottle, with instructions saying “Press down while turning.” The cap had teeth marks on it where Nixon had apparently tried to gnaw it open.

Picture, if you will, the most powerful man on the planet stymied by a child-proof cap.