Six minutes in the life of Sam and Sandy
By ice rivers
- 1057 reads
Sam was a sniveling sixty year old lad held beneath contempt by his wife of fifteen years....the long suffering Sandy.
Upon awakening one day at noon after an intense night of reading which concluded with the final ten chapters of Jude the Obscure, Sam hauled his bad back and lazy ass up the cellar stairs to the relative safety of the first floor.
Sandy was on the second floor doing something responsible on the computer probably having to do with either health care or income tax both of which were mysteries to Sam.
“Good morning or is it afternoon?”, Sam called out to the tapping sounds upstairs.
“Good afternoon” came the rejoinder. Sam felt some relief. It could have been much worse.
The butter was already open on the kitchen shelf. Sam interpreted this placement as an indication that his breakfast/lunch should be breakfast.
He opened the cabinet over the shelf and there they were....white bread and peanut butter.
Uh Oh. The bread was clamped with the device that Sandi usually used to clamp the potato chips after Sam opened them like a child....tearing them open with his teeth and destroying any semblance of freshness.
Sam supposed that on yesterday’s breakfast he had lost the plastic thing that closes the bread and had instead used a knot to keep the bread fresh, If the knot wasn’t tied tight enough, it left too much air in the bag which ruined the bread as surely as a chewed open bag of chips ruined the chips inside.
Sam unclamped the clamp on the bread but only after he had taken a paper plate from the cupboard and put the plate on the shelf. With everything in place, Sam placed two slices of toast into the toaster. He decided against grabbing two Oreos while he waited impatiently for the toast to emerge.
When the toast popped up, Sam took out one slice at a time.Placing the slice on the paper plate...Sam spread on a layer of butter and topped that off with a layer of peanut butter. He repeated the process with the second slice. He put the bread away.
He couldn’t see a single crumb.
Mission accomplished.
Sam refrained from taking his laptop over to the table as he did almost every morning. This restraint would make it impossible for him to get crumbs and peanut butter on the keyboard.
Sam went to the fridge. He wanted a Diet Coke but since iy was a Thursday and not a Saturday, he knew that was forbidden. Instead he took a vanilla flavored protein drink.
He ate the two pieces of toast....he went back to the cabinet....removed three Oreos (one over the limit but hey no crumbs). He put the Oreos on the plate and carried them over to the table. He ate the Oreos over the plate. Yes, there were a few crumbs but they were captured on the paper plate.
The paper plates were costing a fortune so Sam wiped all the crumbs off the plate over the self-opening waste basket.
He dropped the napkin that he used to clean the paper plate into the waste basket.
Then suddenly Sandy downstairs and in the kitchen.
“Oh Jesus, you didn’t put that napkin into the garbage did you?”
Sam, startled. “yeah I just got done cleaning the plate with it.”
Sandy: “I just finished cleaning that waste basket. Didn’t you notice there was no bag inside the goddamned thing. I was letting it dry.
Sam (astonished) “No I didn’t notice. What is this Viet Nam?”
Sam reached into the basket and pulled out the napkin. He put the napkin on the clean paper plate and took them both over to the shelf.
Sandy: “And ya know, you could put the bag in yourself”
Sam went into the cupboard and immediately suffered a spell of cupboard blindness. “I don’t see the bags.’
Sandy: “Of course you don’t. I’ll put them in myself like I do everything else around here.”
And then
Sandy: “If you wiped off the paper plate why is it on the shelf and not in the cupboard on top of the other plates.?”
Sam: “I couldn’t use the basket so I took the napkin and the plate back to the shelf until I found the bag to put the napkin in.”
Sandy: “when you put the napkin on the plate, you got the napkin crumbs on that plate along with whatever residue was in the waste basket.”
Sam: “Whaddya want me to do with the napkin?”
Sandy: “Take the plate and the napkin into the garage. Wipe the plate with the napkin. Put the napkin in the garbage can...bring the plate back in and put it in the cupboard”.
Sam went to he garage and returned with the plate.
Upon entering the house
Sandy: “what’s the clamp doing on the shelf?”
Sam realized that he had tied the bread with a loose knot out of habit and left the unused clamp on the shelf. Any second, Sandy would open the pantry and see that the bread was fastened with a loose knot.
Sandy made her way to the cupboard, found the garbage bag and put it into the wastebasket.
Sam went into the pantry, removed the know from the bread and replaced it with the clamp.
Sam, the sniveler, had been out of bed for maybe six minutes.
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Comments
I see you met my grandmother!
Loved this! I could clearly see the story unfold!
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