The Tupperware Drawer

The Tupperware Drawer
Bev Smith
July 2, 2010

We have a storage cabinet in our kitchen that is the size of 2 regular-sized cabinet doors. It houses a large drawer instead of shelves. It's known in our house as the Tupperware drawer.  It has held just about every piece of Tupperware that has ever been created.  As a matter of fact, when we built and moved into our house 19 years ago, I told Tim to not ever let me buy another piece of Tupperware. You know moving puts into perspective just how much stuff you really have!

I have had a love/hate relationship with this drawer for almost 20 years now. The drawer is a source of great delight at times and a total aggravation at other times.  The fact that it can be a source of delight is due to its ability to hold a lot of Tupperware.  There is a nice little partition running the both the height and depth of the drawer. That allows me to store lids on one side and bowls on the other. But remember, I said it can also be a source of aggravation.  Those times come when it gets so full that items get knocked behind the drawer. When that happens, the drawer won't close. In that event, it usually takes two people who know what they're doing to unlatch the locks that hold the drawer in place, remove the drawer from the cabinet, get the piece of plastic that is lodged at the back of the cabinet and return the drawer, locking it in place. If the bowl isn't retrieved the cabinet doors have to stay wide open and the drawer pulled out until the object can be retrieved. Now if the cabinet were in an inconspicuous area, that would not be such a big deal to me, but it's right in our walking path from the kitchen to the garage and if the cabinet doors remain wide open for any length of time, they wind up getting knocked and legs wind up getting scratched and bruised.

While getting a bowl out of the Tupperware drawer several years ago, another bowl was accidentally knocked behind the drawer. Ordinarily, that would not have even been an issue but this particular time, it was.  Now, remember...it takes 2 people to unlatch this giant-sized drawer and remove it and my helper, my sweetie, Tim, was on travel in Houston.  So, my next two helpers, Nathan and Aaron talked to their Dad on the phone and attempted to remove the drawer from the cabinet with Tim giving them instructions over the phone. Nate would have been 14 and Aaron would have been 12 at the time.

My kitchen was a sight! There was Tupperware strewn all over the floor and Nate and Aaron were both kneeling down in front of the large, pulled-out drawer trying to figure out how to get it unlatched and removed.  Mikayla, who was 5, was standing over them with a snake-light flashlight trying to "shed some light" on the matter.

After no luck with their Dad talking them through it, I was given the phone and chatted with Tim for a while.  This had been our first chance on this particular day to talk, if I'm remembering correctly. We usually caught up on the day's events during our evening phone calls when he was on travel. The next thing I heard was Nathan saying to Aaron, "If you touch me, I'm going to slug you sooooo hard!" Apparently, Nathan had decided to try to reach back behind the drawer and get the bowl. When he did, his arm became wedged between the top of the cabinet frame and the top of the cabinet drawer. Aaron's remedy to the problem was to grab hold of Nate (along with his arm) and pull.  Now, 1... 2... 3...pull!   I looked around and my first thoughts were, Oh my goodness!!!!!  What on earth? Then my thoughts immediately changed to - Tim's not here! I am going to have to call 911!  I cannot believe this! Nate was sitting there looking pretty helpless and in just a little bit of pain with his arm stuck and dangling from the elbow down behind that ginormous drawer with a younger brother just waiting for the go-ahead to pull and a younger sister continuing to hold the snake light overhead.  Oh if I had only known about America's Funniest Home Videos at the time!

It took a little while, but after some gentle pulling and pushing and repositioning of Nate's arm, he was finally able to pull it out from behind the drawer. He said that he had gotten it stuck because his forearm was so big. He had just previously started doing some weightlifting.  I laughed. He was 14.

After Nate got his arm loose, I decided to try a little something myself to remedy the matter.  I jerked and jerked and jerked on that drawer! I guess I was trying to jerk it out of the cabinet. Nathan said I was crazy. He probably was right. I was fighting with a drawer. That day, I let that drawer get the best of me and my patience.

Sometimes, when we get to the end of the day, we pray that God will give us another one to do better with 'cause we surely didn't use the one that He had given us very well.  That was one of those days.