I found another old journal entry. it was an exercise in writing every day. It started out with a complaint that I couldn't
think of anything to write about, and it turned into writing about a little
memory.
Reading it, It feels kind of like starting a lawnmower - a couple of unproductive
yanks before things start puttering along.
---2006
The thoughts hide when I'm armed with a
pen. A pen's line is too sharp. It can cut ideas like a string cuts
cheese.
The Velveeta (tm) weeps at the slicing.
Father mailed a flashlight in a Velveeta box, once. It was our box [my sisters and I]. We had been using it to hold crayons all our lives.
He laughed, thinking of the person at the other end opening it and seeing all the rainbow net of random marks on the inside cardboard. But it was the right size. So the flashlight went in with the letter that their batteries had leaked far too soon and ruined the flashlight and what were they going to do?
He was very happy when the new flashlight came. It was a triumph and a lesson to us.
I don't know that we did with the crayons after that. I can remember a tin - a round fruitcake tin that was hard to open and pained the fingers. Perhaps it inspired us to keep crayola boxes intact longer.
It was a better flashlight. We liked the shiny silver. And we were getting old enough to want to throw out crayon stubs.
-----
[I emailed my sister, after finding it.]
The Velveeta (tm) weeps at the slicing.
Father mailed a flashlight in a Velveeta box, once. It was our box [my sisters and I]. We had been using it to hold crayons all our lives.
He laughed, thinking of the person at the other end opening it and seeing all the rainbow net of random marks on the inside cardboard. But it was the right size. So the flashlight went in with the letter that their batteries had leaked far too soon and ruined the flashlight and what were they going to do?
He was very happy when the new flashlight came. It was a triumph and a lesson to us.
I don't know that we did with the crayons after that. I can remember a tin - a round fruitcake tin that was hard to open and pained the fingers. Perhaps it inspired us to keep crayola boxes intact longer.
It was a better flashlight. We liked the shiny silver. And we were getting old enough to want to throw out crayon stubs.
-----
[I emailed my sister, after finding it.]
Do you remember the
box and Dad sending the flashlight away? I remember us both watching the whole
thing. I suspect that using our box made us feel involved.
-----
[She replied]
Yes, I remember the flash light story. He was over the moon they gave him a
better flash light.
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