The Note

Written for

FORUM

The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week!  (13+) Write the best story in 24 hours or less and win 10K GPS! #333655 by Sophy New Year

The New Prompt is:
Write a poem or story about a yard sale find. Something that you find at a sale and you feel needs a story behind it.

The Note

It was Saturday evening; I had spent most of Saturday morning making the yard sale rounds looking for good used blue jeans with which to make a quilt. After I returned home, I was routinely checking all the pockets of the pants that I was about to laundry. I had the six pairs of blue jeans that I had bought at various yard sales. As trusting a soul that I usually am, I just could not bring myself to start cutting and sewing these blue jeans without first laundering them. As I was reaching in one pocket and then another, my fingers suddenly brushed against a wad of something. With the usual uncelebrated bravery that only mother’s who have done tons of young children’s laundry can know, I grasped whatever it was that was lurking in that pair of jeans right-hand front pocket, and brought it into the light of day. There trapped deep within the crevice of the denim jeans pants pocket was a note.

For a few brief moments, I studied the pants. I just was not sure if they belonged to a boy or a girl, but the one thing that I was sure of is that the child must have outgrown the jeans. The jeans did not have the appearance of being second hand. The jeans appeared to be in too good of shape, which only meant that the child did not have younger brothers or sisters to pass them down to.

By the size of the jeans, I figured that it must have been a child in elementary school, maybe third or fourth grade. I laid the note on top of the dryer as I put my treasure of jeans that would soon be a quilt in the washer. I took the note with me as I went into the kitchen to have a cup of coffee. I sat at the kitchen table, and slowly, gently, and carefully began to unfold the paper.

It soon became obvious that the jeans had been washed with the note in the pocket. The paper began to disintegrate as I gingerly lifted each fold. I could see that it had once been a page out of a spiral notebook from the jagged edges, but the typical blue lines were now all but invisible, washed and faded away. I began to hope that the note was not important, and that it was not something this child’s mother would have wished that she had seen.

I reached for my pack of cigarettes, and before I could get one lit, all the memories of all the notes that I found in the pockets of my own children’s jeans filled my mind, and suddenly, I found myself sitting at my table with tears streaming down my face.

Just about that time, my husband walked in, took one look at me, and said, “What is it this time?” I could hear the concern and confusion in his voice.

How could I explain this to him? Not only had he never found a note in a child’s pocket in his life; it probably never would have occurred to him to even read it. He would have considered it an invasion of privacy, or something. So, I responded the only way that I could, by saying, “Oh, it’s nothing.”

And of course he said what he has said almost everyday since he married me, “Any man that says that he understands women is either a fool, or is a liar. You know I love you, don’t you, Honey?” With that he poured himself a cup of coffee, and refreshed my cup of coffee, handed me a box of tissues, sat down, and politely waited for the next shoe to drop.

I gathered up the brittle, puzzle-like paper pieces of the note lying on the table, walked over to the trash, and threw it all away. On the way back to the table to sit and have coffee with my husband, I counted my blessings, and thanked God that men are just not like women. I really don’t know how I would feel, or react if I ever found him at the table sniffling over a wad of paper he pulled out of a pair of children’s jeans he had purchased at a yard sale.