Pandora’s Box

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but my wife is an immaculate woman. Not in the biblical sense, mind you, but she is all about cleanliness and being neat. If you know her, you know that she’s always well-dressed and “put together.”

And despite the rest of us, she also keeps our house really clean. She is constantly picking up after our 15-year-old daughter and our dog, Buddy.

That’s why, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why her car is such a mess.

My theory is that it is her sanctuary – her car is used mostly to shuttle our daughter for school and for all her many activities. It’s like when you’re running a marathon and along the path people are handing you water or snacks, which you consume and immediately discard the containers and wrappers.

Also, in her defense, her car is used as the “family” car, so we all partake in using the interior of her car as kind of a giant trash receptacle.

The other day my wife asked me a favor. She said she had lost one side of her favorite earrings and wanted me to look under the driver’s seat to see if I could retrieve it.

Little did I know that I should have donned a hazmat suit to do it.

I literally found the following items under the driver’s seat:

A partially eaten protein bar, two deodorant sticks, a ticket stub for the swap meet, 39 pens that no longer worked, a staple puller, three pairs of my wife’s cheap reading glasses, several straw paper wrappers, four of those green Starbucks splash sticks, a half bottle of skin lotion, 16 ATM receipts, an empty plastic water bottle, a collapsible umbrella and Amelia Earhart’s airplane.

Ok I exaggerated; it was only five pens. Eventually, I found her earring, but not until after I amassed enough recycleable items to finance our daughter’s college education.