Found Things

It's interesting to me how things I cherished at one point in my life can lie in a drawer for a decade unremembered. I took on the task of cleaning the top drawer to my bedside table last week. I knew it needed to be done. I'd not seen the bottom of that drawer since at least 1994. It's the drawer where I toss everything from a card with new bobby pins to some over the counter drug Roger wanted me to take back in the years he was in my life.

I remember that drug. It's in a small clear capsule and the drug itself is brown. According to his instructions I was to take about 10 of these at one time. After that I had dizzy spells and really bad constipation. I stopped taking them. When he brought me replacement bottles, I tossed them in that drawer. Cleaning the drawer I tossed fifteen bottles in the trash!

I also found twenty-seven eye shadow compacts, some of which were new and some of which were exact duplicates. There were seven mascara wands! My friend Ann tells me I should replace my mascara every three months. I bet some of those were at least six years old. What's funny about this is I wear make-up maybe six times in a month and make-up to me is just mascara and eye shadow.

But that's not what I said I cherished. Cleaning that drawer led me headlong into cleaning out a hammock where I found seven stuffed animals; from a Gund bear I bought from the Hug Factory long ago, to small bears that friends had given me for my birthday because they didn't know what to get me. One was a "friend" bear with a cute saying from Ann and one was a bear wearing vinyl red fetish clothing and a small whip!?
Sometimes I realize I've lived lives that I don't even remember the details of any more!
Eventually I got around to cleaning the small drawer in my chair side. This is the old green broken down Lazy Boy near my computer. I found hundreds of rubber bands from the daily paper, uncountable packets of salt and pepper from Dairy Queen biscuits and gravy, from back when I could hardly pass the place in the morning without stopping. Buried under all that was a book mark. I don't remember who got it for me, for I could tell I'd not have bought it myself. The picture is here. I've begun to use it again and it is, as I type, buried on page 363 of "South of Broad." I hope to finish reading that book this week. Then the book mark will be buried in another book.