I was about to pour the tea into my thermos, when I managed to drop the stopcock for it. It hit the floor at the right velocity and angle to burst into pieces. I suspect that it's designed to be modular for ease of cleaning. I gathered the scattered plastic: The black outer ring that screws into the thermos's neck, a black axel with a jaggy coat-tree top, and a white crown gear which is part of the click. I should be walking out the door, but instead I'm looking around for a spring which I think should be allowing the jaggy axel to push up against the crown gear -- ballpoint pens have springs, and without them the pens wont click, so my thermos uses the same mechanism.
I get down on my hands and knees looking for the spring, but I cant find it. It's not with the crumbs under the kitchen table, or any of the chairs. It's not under the cabinets. It's not under the fridge. I look some more. For ten minutes, all the time aware that I'm getting later and later and I've got a bunch of brewed tea and no way to take it to work. Flustered, the fall-back action is to take fresh dry loose leaf tea to work and brew it there.
After work, I come home and go out on the deck. It's possible the spring jumped out onto the deck and rolled between a crack. So I look under the deck. Which involves a lot of limbo-wiggling through dry, pokey dirt. It isn't there.
Dejectedly, I put the stopcock together without the spring to see just how broken it was.
Click-click. And. It. Works. Click-click. I test it a few times and it continues to work.
I'm sure there's a metaphor in there, somewhere.
Click-click. And. It. Works. Click-click. I test it a few times and it continues to work.
I'm sure there's a metaphor in there, somewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment