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Show found some really good things in the junk drawer change most of it in pennies. I also found a couple hundred pieces of string. Each of these was about two inches long. I found plastic utensils including forks, spoons, knives, and something that I couldn't identify. (It was sort of melted and looked as if we might have used it to roast a KEVIN CUMMINGS Correspondent PLAY, nothing happened. I shook the player and got a short, deep sound-kind of like a seal with a throat problem. I pulled the batteries bat-teries out, put in another set and tried it again. In just a few minutes I m had gone through all the batteries in the drawer. They were all dead. Now, this is where the brain damage begins to show. If I were a reasonable human being, I'd just throw the dead batteries away. Instead, In-stead, I carefully put them back in the drawer in case I need them "later." I think junk drawers must satisfy some deeply hidden need in the human mind. Every house I've ever ' been in has a junk drawer. I'll bet that even big expensive houses have junk drawers. If you went to Buckingham Buck-ingham Palace for tea and said, "Excuse me, but where might I find the junk drawer," the queen would tell you that it's in the kitchen. She wouldn't even bat an eyelid. Everybody has a junk drawer. Since none of the batteries in the drawer worked, I had to buy some. I needed two, but I could only find them in sets of four. That's okay, though. In case I ever need them, I've put the extras in the junk drawer. All I wanted was a set of batteries for my tape player. I didn't want to go on an archaeological expedition. "Batteries?" my wife asked. "I think there are some in the junk drawer. "Do we have any anywhere else?" I asked. I really hate looking through the junk drawer. Every time I open the junk drawer, I get brain damage. I took a deep breath, opened the junk drawer and looked inside. At first it was hard to identify any individual in-dividual items. Everything was all jumbled together. After a moment, though, I started to sort things out. Right at the top of the pile was the pair of nutcrackers that we couldn't find last Christmas. They'll stay on top of the pile for a few months and then they'll get buried again. Next Christmas we'll look and look for them, but they'll stay in hiding until Jan. 2. The next layer was composed entirely en-tirely of quarter-inch candle stubs. We keep these around so we'll have candles when the power goes out. The candles go nicely with all the matchbooks I found that have only one match. Beneath the candles I found the really good junk. I was delighted to find an amazing amount of loose marshmallow.) Then I started to find the springs, screws, bolts and electric gizmos whose functions and origins I've long since forgotten. The next layer was composed of such useful tools as the hammer with a loose head. Lying next to that was a screwdriver with a chipped blade and a half of a pair of pliers. Finally, at the bottom of the drawer, I found a small pile of batteries. bat-teries. I grabbed a set and put them in my tape player. When I pressed |