Snooker Game - story

[White Warlock]

This is a metaphorical short i wrote a few years back.

..............................

Something caught my eye the other day. As i was leaving a friend's house, I came upon a cardboard box, taped ineffectually about the ends, dustied and dirtied. It looked like any other box, except it was elongated and carried with it no noticeable markings. No brands or labels, no weights or measures. Only the tell-tale scratches of an item having been dragged through a grassy field.

But I was captivated by it nonetheless, and my hands quickly went about removing the tape that held it so precariously together. This action flooded my nose with minor speckles of the dust that i now noticed had encrusted itself at the corners and the edges of this simple cardboard box. I sneezed deliberately and regained my composure to finish the task at hand. In short order i was able to remove the tape, which fell apart and wrapped about my fingers, a child to a stranger's knee.

Without bothering to release the grip that the tape had upon me, I reached into the carboard box and allowed my fingers to flutter about inside. My palm finally rested on a plastic enwrapped item, so I gripped firmly and wrested it from its home. More dust escaped into the air and once again I sneezed deliberately.

Wiping the remaining speckles of dust from my face, creating unsightly streaks in the process, I gazed through the aged-dimmed plastic and noted a beautiful little present inside. A handmade wooden snooker game, just as dusty as all before it, with only one little handle, snapped cleanly, and tied to a wooden soccer man. A reminder, perhaps, of what needed to be mended before it could be used again.

Odd that it would be dusty, even through a plastic bag and a cardboard box, but dusty it was. I reasoned that it must have laid in a garage for quite a long time before it was placed in a bag, then laid even longer before it was placed in that simple cardboard box.

How long ago had it lost the interest of its owners, i could only speculate. But now, after being shelved and ignored for countless years, it had finally been discarded.

To me, it was a beautiful thing. Simple, yet functional, it held a charm all its own. Yet I could not dismiss the questions. Why would someone work so hard to create something so personal, then bag it, box it, and toss it out of mind?

Then I thought of my life. Of the things that I had done and the people I had hurt. Of the times i had worked to build my life into its simple beauty, and how i had bagged, boxed and tossed it out of mind. I thought of my life, and of this snooker game. We spend so much time and effort on creating our existence, but when one little thing breaks, we package it all away and hope for it to mend on its own.

It will not, of course, but the dust will nonetheless settle and time will take its toll. Eventually we will either snap out of it and race to find our snooker game, or mourn its passing.

Had we only fixed it then.

- White Warlock

[pmeckiff]

Dude, you should become an author with writing like that!

[supajuice]

one of the many reasons I'm voting him. but really intresting. my mind wouldn't go that far with that but yours did. strange!