Should I Leave the House?

Divorce: "OK, you take the damn salad spinner. It was yours anyway."

I needed a salad spinner (SS). Paper towels just didn't do it for me.

I had been looking in the neighbourhood: @ the supermarket, health food store, 99 cent store, nearby surplus store. No, no, no, and no. I had to go further afield. My friend, Tekkie, said she was going to Canadian Tire to buy paint. I decided to look there for a SS and headed over.

There was ONLY one in a box on a very high shelf. A tall salesman whacked it a few times and it fell into my arms. It was higher end, half price, and $25. It did more than spin. Tekkie showed up, paint in hand, and said "No way." Let's try the Dollarama. I left the pricey one on a lower shelf and reluctantly got into T's car.

I knew better. I had set out with her before on a short trip and didn't get back for hours. I knew that about her, but left my car in the parking lot anyway. NEVER AGAIN.

Anyway, after checking the downtown Dollarama without luck, we tried another place called Family Liquidation Centre – seemed relevant given the divorce and all.

Edit bf says Family Liquidation Centre sounds kind of holocausty.

They had no spinners either. Then I remembered a restaurant supply store where I had once bought a frying pan. This was just west of the main downtown intersections. Tekkie let me out and parked. I ran in and asked the chipper, red-haired shopgirl if she had a salad spinner.

“Yes! yes!” she said eager to be helpful. “We have two different sizes. I’ll show you.”

“Wow,” I said. “I’ve been looking all over town. Are they less than $25?”

“More,” she said. “Much more.”

Then she showed me a 20-gallon salad spinner that could do 16 lettuces at once. It cost $2870.

The smaller, 5-gallon, 8-lettuce spinner was only $200.

At this point, paper towels were looking pretty good. I wanted to go back to my car on the other side of downtown at the Canadian Tire, but Tekkie said she had two in her shed. She knew exactly where they were, but couldn’t get to them. How hard could that be?

On the way to her house, we had to drive by five different properties that she had been looking at as she is desperate to move.

Eventually, the shed. We got into it, but the salad spinners were in a box at the far end under 10 other boxes, behind the contents of the homes of her dead relatives.

I finally got back to Canadian Tire. The one I had taken off the high shelf was back on the high shelf. A step stool was in the aisle. I climbed up and got the $25 one down BUT . . .

While I was up there, I noticed another salad spinner that had not been there before.

The new salad spinner was infinitely inferior to the $25 one, but exactly what I needed. It had less capacity than the industrial-sized ones and was $9.99.

To paraphrase T.S.Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration (for a salad spinner), and the end of all our exploring

will be to arrive where we started (Canadian Tire)

and know the place for the first time.