Nuts and Bolts

This post will be a "backwards," meaning that it looks back a little on past events. When we named this blog "Backwards, forwards, and Edwards" we thought that we would include stories from our past and present and thoughts on our future. It has turned out to be more like a journal of the ridiculous happenings of every day...but no matter.

A few days ago I found myself singing a little song to myself in my head. The little ditty was a chant made up by some students in my high school (has it really been SIX YEARS since high school?!?). The chant goes a little something like this:

"Nuts and bolts, nuts and bolts, we GOT SCREWED!" (And like all good chants and shampoo, it could be repeated if necessary.)

The chant was used often after bad calls were made by the referees during football and basketball games. Most notably, it was chanted in one of my brother's Varsity basketball games during a timeout, that is, until my brother's coach completely lost his mind and yelled at his own crowd. The story goes that he didn't want his young daughter hearing such a chant and that's why he got so angry, but it was quite a sight to see a grown man yelling red-faced at an unruly sea of teenagers who were chanting words from the inventory at Home Depot. I don't know that I've ever heard of another coach yelling at his own fans for cheering on behalf of his own team.

Anyway, that little chant was circling around in my mind because I had decided to hang some curtains. When we moved out of our apartment I took down all the nails, screws, pieces of curtain hardware, nuts and bolts (nuts and bolts, we got screwed) from the walls and put them into a gallon sized zip lock baggie for safe keeping. I wanted to keep them all together so that I wouldn't lose them. As I began to get the curtains and curtain rods together, though, I realized that I hadn't seen the zip lock bag since we moved. I'm ashamed to say that there were (and still are) some unpacked boxes upstairs at our house, so I went up to look through those. No baggie.

(This is the point where I started chanting.)

I set up a massive manhunt (nailhunt?) for the baggie and attempted to enlist the help of Jeffrey and the National Guard, but Jeffrey plead "March Madness" and the National Guard just ignored me, so I was on my own.

I looked in suitcases and piles of clothes, in the garage and in the pantry, under chairs and beneath beds, and finally--

I found it!

It was right where it should have been...in the bag that holds all of my gift bags and wrapping paper.

Nuts and bolts, nuts and bolts....are you chanting yet?