The Junk Drawer

Tonight I decided to clean the junk drawer. You know, the drawer where things end up when they have no other place to go. A sort of Bermuda Triangle for $.34 stamps, paper clips of all sizes and colors, scissors and brick-like red Ruby erasers, and souvenir coins from places like the Winchester Mystery Museum.

I found a rubber ball with a chunk ripped out of its side and five different calculaters: A large Mickey Mouse version with easy to read numbers, a small black one that runs on solar power, a credit card sized one that my fingers couldn't manipulate, and two in-betweeners. Only Mickey was operational.

I have never seen so many ballpoint pens of different races, colors and creeds in my life. There were retractables in green, blue and red. Some with big barrels and others were slim and trim. There were waitstaff pens from Outback, Champs, Willie's Icehouse and other eateries where my daughter worked during the restaurant period of her life. In fact, there were more loose pen caps than there were pens to cap. How does that happen?

Try to image how many designs are printed on pencils? Standard #2, dayglo, flowers, teddy bears, Texas A&M, University of Mary Harden Baylor, Chase Bank and Klein Bank... Klein Bank has been gone for five years. There was even a pencil sharpener that was missing its catch-cup . . . pencil shavings were scattered throughout the back of the drawer like sawdust on a tiny honky-tonk dance floor.

I found marbles and money, stamps with birds and Santa Claus, a small vending machine-type plastic globe with a gold ring . . . it was quite lovely for a something costing a quarter.

There were books of return address labels, and an envelope with photos from the past ten years. Another small envelope had expired drivers licenses for the entire family dating back to when they were 16-years-old, and assorted other forms of picture I.D.

Why does any family need more than two rulers, or one tape measure? I discovered that at some time this family needed six. There was a 3-inch ruler in pink, a 6-inch ruler in yellow, three 12-inch rulers in assorted colors and part of another ruler that could have been any size over 10-inches at one time. . . it had been broken off, probably to make it fit in junk drawer.

There were thumb tacks, push pins and map pins mixed in with loose nails and screws, and shreds of beef jerky and M&Ms wrappers.

I even found a knife from a place setting that we had tossed out ten years ago. How? I don't even want to go there!

Cleaning the junk drawer is insightful; an exploration into the mind of those who live by the saying, "A place for everything and everything in its place" ... that place being the Junk Drawer.