When I was a kid, I’d plop right down on the ground, no matter where I was, if my shoe came untied. I’d give the laces a good yank to tighten things up, and then I’d finish shoring up the shoe with a nice little bow. But every so often, during the yanking phase of things, that shoestring would break.
Oh, I loathed a broken shoestring. I’d hold the string in my hand, looking with amazement as if it had never happened before. Then, the task would follow of taking off the shoe and knotting the broken piece to the point at which it snapped. It made tightening the shoe difficult from that point on, as the knot would always get stuck at an eyelet. And, moreover, I had to be very careful when tying again, as the repair was frail at best.
All of this came about in my mind because I was thinking of junk drawers. All the stuff we need. But first, hear the path.
Back to the broken lace. We didn’t get new shoelaces as kids. It wasn’t something we even asked for. Instead, though, we could head to the “tool drawer” in the corner of the kitchen to see if there were any in there.
Let me say a few words about the tool drawer. It was immaculate and ordered. All the screwdriver heads were at one end of the drawer, neatly lined up. A hammer ran along the long edge, on the left-hand side. There were a couple of small plastic containers inside. In those were either nails, or screws, or some other type of fastener. But the entire thing was in order and arranged. A pair of pliers. A small wrench or two. Finally, toward the back of the drawer were a variety of items. A small roll of masking tape, a marking pen, pencil. And there, if we were lucky, might be a couple of shoestrings, neatly wound and pinched in the middle with a bread tie. This was my father’s tool drawer. There were strict rules about this space. But the golden rule here? “Put it back where you found it.”
Back to the laces. So, we’d go find Dad and ask if we could have the lone shoestring. The color never mattered. A lot of times, I’d go around with one black dress shoestring in my gym shoes. It was better than the knotted/repaired version.
However, and this is a big, however. On the other side of the kitchen was a “counter” that ran along the wall, with four drawers. This was Mom’s area. There lived four junk drawers. The one at the far left end was her “sewing drawer” with all sorts of threads, needles, scissors, and those sorts of things. The far-right end was the “paper drawer.” It was as it sounds. Filled with writing paper of various sorts. The middle two drawers were off-limits. Mom’s, and Mom’s alone. They were stuffed. They were hard to open and even more difficult to shut. But apparently, they were things she needed.
Finally, at the far right corner of the counter was a “stack” of Mom’s papers and things. The thick Dayton phone book sat on top of this stack.
And, every so often, something would “go missing” from Mom’s stack, and all hell would break loose. In all the times, Mom would announce to the house that something was missing from her stack because “she had put it RIGHT THERE.” My Dad would stop what he was doing and calmly go into the kitchen and pull whatever item she had misplaced directly from the pile. Like magic. It had been there all along.
The enigma of the Junk Drawer. Some people have one. Or many. And other folks do not have one at all. I do not. If you open any one of “my” drawers, you will find something similar to the childhood tool drawer. I know plenty of people who have those junk drawers, though.
I have a lot of theories on this, but clearly, it is dependent on the person. What makes one person love a junk drawer and another person avoid them? It could be in our wiring. It could be in our circumstances.
Either way, if we try hard enough, we will always find what we are looking for. It may not be what we want, but it will be what we need. Broken shoe laces, and all.
=======
“Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.”
― José Ortega y Gasset
========
“Life has a way of taking you past your wants and hopes. Instead, it drops you in front of what you need.”
― Shannon Alder
=========
“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.”
― Allen Ginsberg
=========
A broken string, which leads to the knot. We are.
