Yes, any two-year-old knows this isn't a brontosaurus,
but when you're using clip art, you can't be picky!
It wasn’t until after we had called the plumber for the third time that I realized we had a gourmet garbage disposer in our kitchen sink.
How else could I explain the fact that it upchucked grisly
offerings of amputated chicken tails or oily fish heads and swallowed comparatively
palatable tidbits like leftover strawberry shortcake and pineapple tapioca
without a problem?
Red potato peels went down smoothly, but the grimy brown
remains of Idaho russets became a gurgling clog.
My five-year-old son Michael thought he understood. “There’s a monster in there,” he deadpanned
the first time he watched a spoon disappear into that mysterious cavity, only
to see it emerge again flipping halfway across the counter in the twisted shape
of a stainless steel pretzel.
Later, as his imagination began to work overtime Michael’s
monster became a dinosaur. “A brontosaurus,”
Mikey said.
“You have to give him water,” he told his best friend, David
Shelley. David’s carrot-colored hair
accentuated a sudden pallor in his cheeks, as Michael, under my supervision,
fed the formidable creature pungent grapefruit rinds and coagulated oatmeal
clumps.
Before the day was over, though, I would repent of my
misguided efforts to entertain those two kids.
Michael and David
had seemed unusually quiet as they played in the backyard for half the
afternoon. Before I could shriek, “What
on earth?”, they were trailing in savaged bits of embryonic endive, underdeveloped
onions, and a tangled mass of snow-pea vines, not to mention an ill-fated
earthworm at least three-feet long.
There was nothing to do but stoically feed the whole mess,
minus the worm, to that gluttonous creature beneath the sink.
“Brontosaurs are vegetarians,” I told those watchful little
boys.
The next morning, with a more than nostalgic longing for the
“good old days” when people wrapped their garbage in newspaper columns like
this one, I called the plumber again.
Sharon Nauta Steele
May 21, 1982
The Lakeside Review
