Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Memory (07/10/08)
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TITLE: NOT GUILTY--DUE TO MEMORY GLITCH | Previous Challenge Entry
By Teresa Hollums
07/15/08 -
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Looming before the graying wife seemed a musty, dusty dragon simply laughing at her procrastinations to get rid of it. The laughter finally had reached intolerable proportions—even to her procrastinating soul. The dragon of the garage simply just finally had to go—which it did once every year in the summertime.
My goodness!! How can we accumulate so much junk? This is finally a cool enough day to really clean out my garage. I guess I finally have no excuse. I know my husband insists we keep all those computer and other ‘thing’ boxes in case we must return them in the same packaging we have before—but, wow, our garage just cannot be the next warehouse storage for possible returns. I know he wants to keep them all—just in case—but how many cases of storage room do I have?—ABSOLUTELY NONE!! I think I’ll just play memory loss, and do what I really must and have to do—throw them all away—no exceptions. The garage dragon lady killer is now here!! Hey, look at this long skinny box. Well, it is open. It sure feels like just another keepsake, stupid box to throw away later to me. It sure feels empty—so I’ll just put it in the throw away empty boxes pile over there. That is just unbelievable—I don’t live in any mansion with storage closets to keep keepsakes forever and ever. If they want them, why don’t they just come get them?
It just really, really makes me furious that I am the one to store everything, that my storage is so limited, and that he simply can’t or won’t help me with all this throw away. I really feel that if he can’t or won’t help me, I have a right to just throw it all away. It seems that I face the same accumulation of junked stuff every single year. I work all year, and just because I am a teacher with a few months “free” in the summertime, I’m elected to do all the once- a-year necessary work. Besides, he says he says he actually feels a little dizzy when it is too hot—which is about every day in the summertime in this small West Texas town. I don’t know if he’s right, but it seems he has been made of totally melt able sugar whenever “hot” jobs occur anytime.
And the older, graying woman continued to fuss and gripe once again just to get her anger juices flowing enough to tackle her most hated job of each year—cleaning out the piles of stored stuff in their garage—the only area for storage in their small home. She finally worked herself enough into a dither to finally get started to clean the garage.
--And after about six hours of hard labor, sweaty piles, and dragging sack after sack of junk to the trash, she finally ended her foray into the monstrous dragon task. She sagged into the nearest chair in her cool chair. Finally she peeked into their bedroom to find her husband sleeping peacefully in their quiet cool bed after returning from work.
Oh, great, now I get the reward of fixing dinner. Wow, oh, wow, aren’t I lucky!! The woman rested for about 15 more minutes and then got up to complete more work at her home.
It wasn’t until a few months later when her husband decided to do his twice-a-year foray into the mountains to fight and win over his elusive trout in the mountain streams.
He entered her kitchen after scrounging around briefly in their now more organized garage. “Hey, wife, I can’t find my long box that my $400 trout fishing rod came in.”
“Well, the reason you can’t is I threw it away—it was empty. It was empty when I shook it and nothing rattled inside of it. “
“But—but—oh, no! And you did what to my new $400 rod?
And timing once again collides between procrastinators.
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