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WAF (or SO-AF) or ex-WAF or...

216.26.28.71

Posted by Allan on January 7, 2000 at 14:03:29

In Reply to: Re: One thing my Goodwill scrounging has NOT taught me... posted by Jorge F on January 7, 2000 at 12:32:47:

Jorge,

"There's someone in the house that hates it!"

I'm gonna make a guess that you're talking about the SO??? Let me tell you a story...

My ex-wife was the most neurotic neat-freak you could ever imagine - she'd vacuum the air to "...catch the dust before it lands.." if you get my drift. As you have probably guessed, I'm exactly the opposite - I don't even notice dust until it's deep enough to plant daisies in:-). She could throw things out so fast, with so little thought, it'd make your head spin.

Well anyway, while we were married, I had a job that required me to bring work home once in a while and it also required that I have sharp pencils handy - regular black pencils and a slew of colored pencils. Now I like to keep my pencils sharp so I went out and bought a fine new pencil sharpener; solid steel frame with carbide blades, a three speed geared drive, ivory handle and graphite composite housing - I mean this was a real MAN'S pencil sharpener and one that made me proud to mount permanently on the side of an over-head kitchen cabinet (where it obviously belonged:-)). Every time I reached for a coffee cup or plate, I could admire the fine lines of that pencil sharpener.

The wife, unfortunately, didn't quite see the same thing in the pencil sharpener that I did; to her, it was just an eye-sore and a useless piece of clutter that could be replaced by one of those little tiny "twist-type" safety sharpeners that kids take to school when they're in the first grade. One day I came home from work and discovered that my beautiful pencil sharpener was gone; it wasn't just moved to another spot either; it was GONE! She had actually thrown it into the trash! I was devastated, but found the strength to go dig it out and re-mount it on the side of the lower cabinets about waist level and out of sight of general kitchen traffic. I thought, "There. That should be okay. No reason for that to bother her at all."

Well, the next day I came home and guess what? Yep, the pencil sharpener was gone again! This time though, it was really gone...the trash truck had come and taken it to the landfill and my wife was sitting there in her perfectly groomed living room and chair, legs crossed and arms folded, with this huge smirk of victory on her face. "Hi honey", she says, "looking for something?". I was not about to be undone...I went out and bought another one and mounted it to the inside of the doorframe in the entrance to the laundry room - it was eye-level where pencil sharpeners should be, but you couldn't see it unless you were really looking for it. I figured there's no way she's going to be bothered about it out there in the laundry room. Again, I under-estimated her persistence and fortitude and returned the next day to find four mounting screws sitting on the table, but the pencil sharpener was NOT where I'd left it that morning. I never could get her to tell me what she did with that one...

Finally, I bought another model of sharpener. This one had a suction-base on it that allowed me to mount it on any smooth surface, sharpen my pencils, and then remove it and hide it before "Mrs Clean and the white tornado" could toss it in the trash. I felt pretty good..."You don't mess with a man's pencil sharpener and expect him to take it lying down", I thought to myself......the next day, I was served the divorce papers:-)))

But that's just the beginning of this story. After moving out, I decided to build my own furniture for a rustic look. I hauled a bunch of oak and alder logs off a friends place, chucked them up in a large lathe at my place of employment, turned down the ends, bored holes in the uprights, and built a beautiful "log bed" - the whole thing snapped together like a large set of tinker-toys. Verry cool I thought and after setting it up, I proceeded to mount the most gorgeous looking, industrial grade pencil sharpener right to the top of the bedpost! It was the proudest moment of my life:-))) "Ahhhhhh...peace at last" I said to myself.

Well, as in most divorces, you're not really divorced immediately and my case was no different. We kept seeing each other regularly for months afterwards and there was even talk of reconciliation. That is until one afternoon...

She had come over for a visit and a quick cleanup - she always showed up with rubber kitchen gloves and a bottle of Windex or Sani-flush and toliet brushes or her own personal Dust-Buster - there was always something to clean in her mind:-) I was outside working on an antenna for the house and she went on inside after I told her I'd be there in a minute. It actually took me about 5 minutes to finish what I was doing and when I walked in she was in the bedroom with a screw-driver trying to rip my pencil sharpener off the bed-post!!!!

"What are you doing?" I asked increduously.

"This doesn't belong here", she said, still trying to back out the screws that I had epoxied into the wood. "How can you stand to live with a pencil sharpener on your bedpost?"

"It's not all that hard", I said, "when no one else is around to notice."

And that was the last we ever saw of each other on a personal level:-)))
===================================

Today, my pencil sharpener still stands proudly on top of my bedpost, like the torch in the hand of Lady Liberty. It's the constant reminder that I don't have to throw anything away that I don't want to. I'm not sure it's always a good thing though...

Listening to Du Pre and a marvellous cello. I wonder if she'd like to see my pencil sharpener...

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