On thouest second day of August in thost year of twoest thousand two hundred and twenty-one, a kindly gentleman named Kyle opened the silverware drawer in his brand-new house so as to layest a much-prized ratchet set.
“Hang on there, pardner,” his wife, Amanda, a woman with neither a cheerful face nor cheerful disposition, screeched from out of the shadows. “That’s a junk drawer thing, not a real drawer thing.”
“Do we have a junk drawer?” Dear Mr. Kosior wondered aloud.
Amanda opened the top drawer of a bank of kitchen cabinets closest to the family mudroom and unceremoniously stuck the ratchet set into it.
“Boom; we do now,” Amanda said, returning from whence she came.
And hence, hie, and thee – the junk drawer was born.
That junk drawer has been a pain in my butt for as long as it has existed because it is a giant jumble of crap that has both everything and nothing I want. A couple of months ago, I went digging – digging is the operative word; we should really keep a head lamp and a hard hat nearby – for a pen and found the waistband of a pair of underwear (why), three marbles (why), five very used crayons (why), and zero pens (WHY). The other day, I told Nine to get a tube of ChapStick and he stuck his hand in the drawer and found one. Later that day, I asked him to recall the aforementioned ChapStick, and instead of getting the stick uncovered prior, he opened back up the drawer and got another.
Anyways, a new year is upon us, and Target was having a sale on drawer organizers, and I took both of those opportunities to clean the junk drawer.
An interesting fact about the junk drawer is that I have never put anything into it. Also interesting is that I’ve never seen another person living or dead put anything into it, either. How does it remain jam-packed full, then? Only God knows. Here is a sampling of the items I uncovered and deemed necessary enough to keep:
A really, really concerning number of toothpicks. Really. Really really. If you came over to my house and asked for a toothpick and I showed you the quantity of toothpicks we owned, your instinct would be to say,
“Wow, that’s a LOT of toothpicks.”
“Ha ha, yeah, I guess we like them,” we’d have to say.
“Do you use a lot of toothpicks?” You’d feel compelled ask.
We’d pause to think about it.
“No, not really,” we’d say. “Ha ha.”
And then we’d stare at each other in silence while you slowly backed out of the house.
Six pairs of scissors. Not three whole feet from the junk drawer is a knife block containing a pair of kitchen scissors. Kyle and I bought those kitchen scissors together when we were first married and did sexy things like buy kitchen scissors together. I’ve never in my life seen any of the six pairs of scissors in the junk drawer. Why did I keep them? Well, the kitchen scissors have a habit of walking away (“I have them in my bedroom” or “I have them in the basement” or “I have them at Duncan’s house” is a common reason), and I usually don’t realize they are missing until I need them at that exact second. Why didn’t I keep only one pair of scissors and get rid of the other five? Because the little drawer organizer fit all six pairs and I thought, “This is nice; a scissors compartment.” The end.
A floppy disk drive that looked like it went through a major flood and fire with the words “Boston Pictures II” written on it. When I was in college, my parents gave me a first-generation digital camera. It took something like 21kb (about the size of a postage stamp if you printed them out now) photos. I brought the camera to the Boston Marathon and wowed my friends.
“So instead of on a film roll the pictures are stored right on the camera?” They asked as runners whizzed by.
“Yep,” I said, proudly.
“How do you get them off the camera?” They asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
It turned out the way to get them off the camera was to put them on a floppy and then take them to the school computer lab and print them out. I had four of those floppy disks in a box when I left Boston. I have no idea where the other three are, and I have no idea how this one made it to the junk drawer.
Three tape measures, ten tubes of ChapStick, a glue stick, and five packets of handiwipes from Buffalo Wild Wings. I went to throw away the handiwipes (the sink and related hand soap are right next to the knife block) and thought, “Hmm, maybe we will need these if we are ever in such a hurry that we can’t wash our hands but need to clean our hands,” and, although I couldn’t think of such a scenario after several minutes of really wracking my brain for one, saved them.
A piece of dental floss with a ball of tinfoil stuck on the end. “Oh, that’s mine,” Nine said, grabbing it as he walked past.
“What is it?” I asked, but he didn’t answer.
A tooth. Not a human tooth; an animal tooth in a clear baggie. None of us have been able to identify it, nor determine where it was procured. Naturally, I saved it.
After a solid hour of cleaning, the junk drawer was ready for its close-up.
“From this day on, the junk drawer is no more,” I proclaimed to the family. “From now on it is a miscellany drawer.” “Hear hear,” Kyle said, reaching in and pulling out a ratchet.
I wasn’t about to take a picture of our concerning number of toothpicks, so the photo above was rescued from the junk drawer and was taken of me sometime in 2005. It felt appropriate because Sophia Richards, one of the co-hosts of North Dakota Today, is off competing at Miss America. This is me competing at Miss Amanda. Happy New Year!
I’m back on North Dakota Today next week. Two weeks ago on North Dakota Today we talked about Nate Bertram, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as two girls hockey teams coming together to blanket the community in holiday cheer. Remember to nominate the great people in your lives to be a Nice Person of the Week! (Valley News Live)
This is the story of Gingras Trading Post, North Dakota’s oldest building. (Hot 97.5)
Find yourself in the Fargo area with a pair of skates? Find this ice street and have a toodle around. (KVRR)
We had a Christmas house in Grand Forks when I was growing up, too. This is the story of Minot’s house, decorated by Lloyd Lyson. (Minot Daily News)
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