Quote:
Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
now stop it will you, i'm already going to have cut out mr altogether soon if i want to make any progress on my reading list...
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Yes, well, the last forty pages of
The Philosopher's Dog have thus far taken me a week to read (actually, thirty of the last forty as I've still ten to go). I keep staying up jjust long enough for you oddly-timezoned folk to wake up and then I get caught in here until far enough after midnight that the words in the book won't stay still nor in my head.
I shall be going to bed shortly.
One of my memories of Dad (lost to prostate cancer five years ago) is his bedside drawer. Dad was a very
exact person within his own sphere of control (note that he didn't try to "control" us), and one of my oldest memories is of going to his bedside drawer and looking at his stack of fifty cent pieces, his heavy gold watch, his little nail-grooming kit, and his few hankies. They were always exactly in the same place, and placed exceedingly neatly (our fifty cent pieces are not round, but have 12 sides - his stack had all sides aligned). The coins were front right, pushed into the corner. The nail-grooming kit was front-left, its catch facing down and towards the back so just the leather showed, that flat top raising lightly from front-to-back (naturally every nail-tool in it's "holster" inside). The hankies were always back left, with the folds, not the edges, showing. The heavy, gold watch (with heavy gold band) lay flat, in the middle front-to-back, but over on the right, with the face upwards and on the right while the band was perfectly "horizontal" to the left.
Initially I got in trouble for going into the drawer, obviously because Dad thought I'd mess it up rather than any fear of theft. Eventually he realised I had my own introverted and "tidy" mind, and that I would always place everything back exact.
After he died (I was going on 33), I went into his and mum's room and sat next to the drawers to have a look, and even after all those years and after all the houses he'd moved to (Dad was in the RAAF his whole life), everything was the same in that drawer.
So now, when I open a drawer, the first thing I see is a flicker-image of his perfect layout of minimal items...and then it disappears to be replaced with whatever is actually meant to be in there.
Cheers,
Marc