I distinctly recall noticing the pipe cleaner in the middle of the road a day or so ago. Roughly in front of our next-door neighbors’ house, it was an odd bit of flotsam to see lying in the street--fluffy and white, with an inch at each of its ends bent at a jaunty 90º angle. Not that I measured. But, I did note it as we walked the dog by, and I’m equally certain that Jeff did not as he was drifting off toward the Dunkers’ house and I was about to re-trajectorize him. (That’s not a word. Don’t look it up.)
Fast forward to this afternoon. I’ve set my iPhone timer for 33 minutes, and I’m trying to take a short nap on the couch while hiding my face and chest under a throw pillow to keep Chessie the cat from settling in that exact location. I hear Jeff ask Becca something about where is Mom, because he thinks I might want this. (whatever this is. I don’t find out until my timer goes off some fraction of 33 minutes later.)You’ve probably guessed correctly. “This” is the white pipe cleaner, only slightly more squished by traffic, and now lying on the bit of kitchen counter where I routinely fix my muesli in the morning. Becca says “He thought you might want that.” “Thanks,” I say. Then I deposit it in the trash can while wondering, aloud, what other objects Jeff might like to pick up off the street and place on our food preparation surfaces. “A dead squirrel for instance?”Jeff is pretty easy to amuse these days, and my dead squirrel joke got him chuckling for a good three and a half minutes or so. Later I found about 2½ inches of stick which undoubtedly came in from Jeff’s stick-breaking adventures in the yard and attempted to establish a new home-base on the kitchen floor near the stairs. I said no.
2 comments:
This strikes a chord with the Aspies. When Ben was little, he would not go to bed until he had rootled through the kitchen drawers to find some interesting utensil that would occupy him while he was read a story. The day we got my mother's old hand mixer was a real red-letter-day. We also tended to find curiosities in the hedgerows. Once I found something that looked like it was part of a gearbox. Ben was thrilled. Siobhan got rid of it after a week or so. It sounded similar.
My brother was a huge collector of found junk when he was growing up. I liked rocks better. But I do like fiddling with objects and it helps me feel calmer in some situations. When I find something especially fiddle-worthy nowadays, I give it to my daughter who teaches LD kids, because these things are often helpful to have around.
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