Junk Drawer Mysteries
Nikki Nelson-Hicks

     Hold on to your heinies because the universe as we know it has been ripped asunder!

     I found my husband the other day cleaning out the Kitchen Junk Drawer. All of my treasures, big and small, were being tossed into the garbage along with the coffee grounds and leftover scrambled eggs.

     “What are you doing!”

     “I’m cleaning out this drawer. It’s so full of crap it doesn’t even close properly. Look!” He held out his bandaged pinky. “I cut the hell out of my finger on something in there! I’m amazed I didn’t rip the whole thing off!”

     “So? Do you know how many fingernails I’ve broken? You can’t mess around the with Junk Drawer.”

     “What?!?” he said, “It’s just junk! I don’t even know why we even keep half of this stuff…..”

     “You have no idea of what you have done. The Kitchen Junk Drawer is sacrosanct, never to be touched, cleaned out or organized. Didn’t your mother teach you anything? Everything in there is in there for a reason.”

     “A reason? Explain to me the reason you kept all these garbage bag twistees when you tie up the bags by the handles?

     “Those twistee thingies came in handy last winter when we hung out those seed bells for the birds.”  

“Okay…okay…how about these buttons? There are a dozen buttons in here. None of them even match!”

     “Maybe one day I’ll find the shirt they go to. Or maybe one day I’ll need to make a sock puppet. Or maybe one day I could incorporate them all into a wonderful heirloom quilt…”

     “Since when did you start quilting?”

     “I might….someday….”

     “So, let me see if I have this right: in case there is a shortage of bird seed bell hangers, or if are drafted into a sock puppet brigade or, most unlikely, you are overwhelmed by a compulsive desire to document our family in a quilt of buttons, we have to put up with this drawer full of junk?”

     I closed the Drawer, took him by the hand and led him to the kitchen table. It is another sacred place in our house. It is where the kids and I worry over homework, paint with watercolors and play with clay. It is also the place where my husband and I can spend a few moments together just talking, checking in with on another. Since we had children, any time spent together is relished. It is interesting to note that we are usually brought together with the promise of food. The table is a wonderful place, a warm and secure focus of our home.

“You moron.” I said, sitting down. “You just don’t get it, do you? The stuff in the Kitchen Junk Drawer is not just junk…it’s a whole box of possibilities.”

     . “One person’s possibilities are another person’s fire hazard.” he said, crossing his legs.
”And I am not a moron.”

     “You just don’t understand the quantum physics of probabilities.” I said in a huff.

     “What?!?”

     “See, I have this theory…”

     “Oh, Lord…..she has a theory…”

     I feel I need to explain something, my husband is a Master Sergeant in the Marine Corps. He has always been a see-the-hill, take-the-hill kind of guy. He flunked out of philosophy because he could never wrap his mind around the idea that a table is a table only because you think it is a table.

     “No.” he would reply, “It is a table because it is a table. See? Wooden legs, flat surface on top. Table!”

     God love him; he keeps me grounded.

     “It’s like the problem of Schrodinger’s cat.” I  could see his eyes dimming.

“Where you put a cat in a box with a vial of poison with the probability that the poison will be released and kill the kitty but, conversely, there exists the probability that the poison won’t be released and the kitty will live. So, until the moment that the box is opened, the kitty is both alive and dead. See?”

     “Speaking of which…..I haven’t seen the cat in days….”

     I smacked him up side his head. “ Look, we need the Kitchen Junk Drawer to keep balance. With it, we always have the possibility of finding what we need. Need a rubber band? Try the Kitchen Junk Drawer. Lost a key? Look in the Kitchen Junk Drawer. Do you understand? Within the Drawer lie possibilities.”

     “And so my organizing it-“

     “Completely destroys the purpose!” We can’t ever know exactly what is in the Kitchen Junk Drawer or what we need won’t be there!”

     “ So, you are saying that things just magically appear in there. That there are things in that drawer, that drawer right over there, that we did not put in there ourselves? That some sort of invisible cosmic power uses our drawer has a dumping ground?”

     “No, not really. More like a magnet.”

     “A magnet? To pull in junk?”

     “To pull in what we need. When we need it.”

     “You, my love,” he said, kissing my forehead, “are nuts. And I am going to clean out this drawer.”

      “Didn’t you listen to a word I said?!?!?” I said, trying to stop him from pulling out the drawer. “Who knows what will happen!”

     “I know exactly what will happen. I’ll stop cutting my fingers to ribbons looking for the Pizza Hut flyer!”

     “You’re just like a man! No regard for something you can’t touch, kick or eat!”

     “Consider yourself liberated, my love, cause this stuff is going!”

     And so it did. Crinkled bits of ribbons, buttons, bent paper clips, cord, strings, rubber bands, a torn piece of paper with a forgotten phone number on it, a few rhinestones, shells from the beach, pens, a small red ball, some marbles, expired packets of ketchup and taco sauce, some broken scissors (“So that’s what bit me!”), pizza flyers, Chinese take-out menus, glue, tape, glitter. All of it. Into the trash. With what he decided to keep, the current pizza take-out menu, some working pens, a few rubber bands, some paper and the phone directory, he placed in the drawer with precise neatness. I don’t know why I didn’t see this coming sooner. He always does this when he comes back from the field; he needs to organize some part of the house in order to feel like a working part of the family. See? He can say to himself, I did this. I am a part of this household, not just a fleeting shadow. It is his way of marking his territory. I should be happy. There are worse ways.

     Still I worried.

     Days passed. Every working ink pen, pencil, crayon and marker in the house disappeared. There wasn’t a rubber band, safety pin or twistee to be found in the house. It was as if something had gone into reverse and was sucking anything put into it out of it. Kind of like the mystery surrounding missing socks and the dyer. The latest probe to Mars disappeared. I’m not saying that the emptying of the Kitchen Junk Drawer had anything to do with it but it is an interesting proposition.

Still I have faith; the Universe has a way of balancing what Man comes along and bumbles out of whack. So when, the other day, my son fell down and needed a Band-Aid and the box in the medicine cabinet was empty. I glanced nervously towards the kitchen and, holding my breath, I looked into the Kitchen Junk Drawer.

And, lo, there was one solitary Band-Aid.

I could breathe again.