Junk and the Election, Which is Junk

Junk is good. You should always have junk in your house. Not to the point where you should be featured on a TLC show or anything, but a good amount of junk is necessary. My house, well, I think I may have mentioned this to you before, but I am a Grade 1 hoarder, so my house has a lot of junk (invaluable stuff, man, LAY OFF). I’ll tell you 2 stories which should be reason enough for keeping junk around the house.

1.       Junk Hunts

When my cousin Curt and I were little, we’d go spend the night at my Aunt Kathy’s house. There were 3 things (this post has a lot of counting…today’s post is brought to you by the number 3 and the letter J) that we loved about going to Aunt Kathy’s: a challenging game of cootie or pass the pigs, the hot tub, and junk hunts. On these junk hunts, we’d each start off with a shoe box. We’d go to every room of Aunt Kathy’s house, plunder through every drawer, and uncover lots of treasure! It was glorious. A simple mallard duck whatnot? No says I! It is a boat for a troll! Aunt Kathy’s junk became our prized possessions.

2.       Junk Day on Juniper Street

This was a story we read in Miss Barnett’s second grade class. I don’t really remember anything about the story other than there was a great big yard sale at some point. Everyone brought their junk out and set up shop on Juniper Street. After reading the story, our class had its own junk day. Everyone was to bring in some crap toy from home, and then we’d have a sale (with fake money). I came to the yard sale with an unwanted, crappy hand puppet. I left with 2 nutter butters. Yes, that’s right. In addition to the junk, Miss Barnett was also selling Nutter Butters. You better believe I bought myself 2 of those!

So, the moral of the story, kids, is that junk can bring happiness to little dudes and can also score you some Nutter Butters. Tell that to your husband when he asks you if you really need another set of mixing bowls from Sam’s.

NPR reminded me this morning that 12 years ago after the election was over, we still didn’t know who the next president was going to be. Lord God, please do not let that happen this year. I do not know if I can handle much more political coverage. Please, oh please, let everyone on the east coast get power back and be able to vote. Don’t let this circus drag out any longer.

I remember Pappaw’s prayer before Thanksgiving dinner 12 years ago. He prayed for our country, and that the right man for the job (i.e., Al Gore) would ultimately win the election. He droned on and on about it for what seemed like an eternity. At this point, everyone’s heads were up and eyes were open. We were just looking around the room at each other trying not to laugh. Finally, he ended the prayer and looked up. Mommaw said sharply, “We asked for a prayer, not a history lesson.” Beetle rules.