esrosedotblog

CLIPPINGS

The other day I was looking for something. I don't even remember what it was. I never found it.

One of the places I looked was in the upper right drawer of the vanity in our bathroom. This drawer contains small implements like scissors and nail clippers. Tweezers. Stuff like that.

I knew that whatever it was that I was looking for would be in the back of the drawer and so I pulled it all the way out.

Aaaargh!!

In the back of the drawer was this immense pile of, what? I couldn't figure it out? A mouse nest? Something that had deteriorated and fallen apart?

No!

It was a huge pile of nail clippings!

I am sorry if this creeps you out. It did me a bit.

Here were all the nail clippings that I had not shaken out of the nail clippers for, well, about 13 years. Every time the drawer got closed the clippings would be shaken to the back.

Now, I think that I do dispose of the nails. But I guess not.

Here they were. Dare I say thousands? One thousand divided by ten would be 100. If I count toenails which these clearly were not, too small, then it would be 50.

So it is conceivable. All the residue of 100 clippings. Once a week. That would be two years. So it wouldn't take too much longer to collect half or a quarter of the nails.

Of course, it is a reflection on the degree of house cleaning we indulge in.

I showed John and mentioned that it was just the kind of thing where, when I am dead, someone would open the drawer and call everyone else in to look. "The old man saved all his nail clippings".

Of such stuff, legends are made.

I haven't cleaned the drawer out yet. I am thinking that perhaps I will not. It would be more fun to consider the reaction when someone finds them and wonders how the fuck they got there in the first place.

Labels: housekeeping