Laundry rooms sometimes offer unusual reading material. Tonight's find was a first edition of Robert Frost's poems. Few people find lyricism in the drab enclosure where washers and dryers dominate the space. Reading Frost's verse during the spin cycle didn't feel very inspirational. However, what separates printed books from their electronic relatives is the element of surprise. In tonight's case, a mimeographed sheet of questions related to a marriage ceremony and flowers had been inserted into the book. The name of a flower was required for each answer.
Whomever wrote on the sheet used a somewhat blunt pencil for their handiwork. The handwriting sample, with its dull, lazy lines, suggested that the mind holding the pencil wasn't too sharp, either. Nonetheless, this unexpected window into an unknown person's soul fascinated me. The episode reminded me of a fiction story my father wrote many years ago. The tale involved debris that washed ashore on a beach after a storm. My dad, who was born and raised in an oceanfront community during Prohibition, grew up immersed in tales of rum runners, lost ships, and surfside melodrama. In his later life, he finally unleashed his imagination and created a story, based upon an amalgam of real events.
He didn't have Robert Frost's works washing up on the beach. Rather, the poetry book appeared among my apartment complex's laundry room's printed flotsam, quite possibly from a recently deceased former librarian's collection. What would he have made of the appearance of the marriage questions?
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