We all have it. We all see it. Everyday. That one out-of-place item lingering in our home. But suddenly, it becomes such a fixture in our life, in our living space, that we no- longer notice it anymore. Almost as if we ‘un-see’ it, if that is even possible.
It could be a sock sagging helplessly in the middle of the floor. A napkin or tissue or food wrapper carelessly left behind. Possibly it’s the subscription magazine that has been piling up on the corner of the kitchen counter; you never read it or recycle it, yet each month the issues sit endlessly in their designated spot. It could even be a jacket tossed carelessly over a chair or a pair of boy’s outgrown flip flops hanging out in the mudroom that you occasionally slip on your feet to run out to the mailbox or a soccer ball that rolled under the staircase in 2010, now a bit deflated, with so many seasons passing it by. You know that item is there, in your house, right now. Except, you no longer notice its presence.
You don’t move it or even consider removing it because it is now a permanent fixture, like a potted plant or an upholstered chair. It’s simply, well, it simply IS.
In my house, the current transparent object is a mattress topper. The kind college kids purchase to make the 50-year old mattresses in their dorm rooms a bit more comfortable. We’ve all bought one at Bed Bath and Beyond (BB&B) sometime in the last three to five years.
Somehow this mattress topper made its way home over Christmas break. It is neatly duct-taped into a cylinder, like a giant Tootsie Roll, only it’s a marbled shade of aquatic blue. Evidently, its purpose has expired, thus it’s been sitting in the upstairs hallway for months. I see it every day yet somehow, I never notice it. Nor do I have the gumption to remove it, to put it in it’s final resting place, the attic, where no one can see it, or un-see it for that matter, until one day it finds its way out to the curb on trash day.
You might wonder why it doesn’t immediately go to the curb, as my spouse, the un-hoarder in the house, would inevitably do, if and only if, he actually noticed the over-looked object sitting in the hallway. That, however, is another story in and of itself.
The obvious reason the mattress topper is still in transition and has a temporary place in the house at all is because the college student who deposited it here may one day soon come looking for it. And my college-purchasing visits to BB&B are just about expired, as much as I enjoy frequenting that fine establishment.
Granted, this is a rather over-sized object to no longer gain attention. I casually pass by it several times a day without giving it much thought let a lone a glance. Soon, the college student who left it behind will pass through that hallway again; I wonder if he will notice his discarded mattress topper or if he will ‘un-see’ it as I do. Perhaps, he will take it back to school with him either this semester or next. Either way, the Fallen Sentinel (yes, it tipped over on one of its many forgotten days) remains on post, waiting for its fate to be determine
