Junk

     It's odd how I find a "junk drawer" (or basket in this case) such a comfort. It's this happy mix of memories, an embracing of the messy nature of life, and a truly great place to throw all that...well....junk...that just can't seem to find a home. So here is my junk basket. What's in this treasure trove?
     An old ski pass to Winter Park. Boy, what a goofy picture. We skied a lot that year and I actually started getting better at the bumps. On the Mary Jane side, when it's got some fresh snow, I meander through the trees near the top. There's not too much of a slope so the fresh snow slows me down just the right amount. And why the heck is there a whistle attached to the ring it's on?
     A pair of martini sunglasses. Why, every self respecting party-going girl needs a pair of these. I really like the lemon that hangs off one lens and the cherry off the other. Where's the olive, by jove? I wore these to a New Year's Eve party a few years back.
     To go along with the martini sunglasses, there's the impossible-to-find pair of snagglepuss fake teeth. Slip these in and you're a dead ringer for a cousin of the Clampetts. These were worn by my brother, John, at Noelia's graduation party. He dressed up as a cowboy (she was headed to U of Wyoming) and sang her a shady version of the school fight song, "Ragtime Cowboy Joe". Yeah, of course he did. He's my brother.
     And I know you're not gonna believe it, but I swear, it's true...there's also a potato gun in there. No, not a huge potato launcher. Silly. That's out in my garage. This is a "spud gun". You cram the front end of the gun into a potato. It takes a small chunk of potato into the barrel and upon pulling the trigger, it launches this tiny spudlet through the air to its certain victim. Louis and I bought them (yes, I have more than one, somewhere else, in another junk drawer in my house) to entertain a bunch of high school boys that were going to spend the night. They ran around in the dark, potato in one hand, spud gun in the other. In reality, they could be called "spud duds" as the piece of potato, at maximum launching distance, reached no more than a few feet. But it doesn't take much to entertain a bunch of goofy high school boys as long as there is lots in the fridge and they can fart with abandon.
     There are some CO2 cartridges that go with a fancy bike pump I used to have that fell off my bike one ride down the backside of Lookout Mountain. There's a few abandoned coins, an old phone charger, and three of Noelia's leftover senior pictures. There's even a Beverly Hills library card that I absconded from a friend that lived in Beverly Hills for a short while. I saw it in her purse one night when we were out. For some reason, the idea of going to the library in Beverly Hills made me laugh and snort and carry-on something fierce. Perhaps a few beers lubricated the situation, but I begged and begged her for it until finally she relented and let me have it.
     I've been digging down, pulling out one thing after another. And then I spot it. The most treasured thing of all in my junk basket. I know, the potato gun and martini glasses are pretty spectacular, but this, well this is truly unusual. In the bottom of my junk basket is.....drumroll please.....a remote control mouse!! It's a fuzzy, rather life like mouse on wheels. It has little beady eyes, some squat brown felt ears, and a tail that's a little too erect and too stubby to truly fool any self-respecting feline. But the real kicker is the remote. It's in the shape of a giant piece of cheese, the antenna sneaking out from the underside. The buttons are cute little circles with ridges that look exactly like....ritz bitz! Too cute for words! Delilah, my cat, is half entertained, half insulted for hours by this fake rodent, especially by high school boys who get bored with spud guns.
      So that's it. I guess as the saying goes, "What's one man's junk is another man's treasure." Or maybe, "What is one woman's junk, when looked at anew, becomes that same woman's treasure." Heck yeah!