Sprung Cleaning

W

ell, it’s spring now, so that means time for spring cleaning. That is, it’s time for those people who feel the need to do so to do so. Yep, time to go through the house, make it shiny, and get rid of anything unneeded that’s managed to accumulate over the years. 

Oh yes, there’s a story coming. 

It was a little over a decade ago. I was still working as a paid tutor at a local college, so my job was tied to the academic year. This meant that I had a few weeks at a time in which I wasn’t doing too much. Well, it was during one of these periods that my mom enlisted me to help her clean out the garage. We’d been in the house a little over a decade at that point, so that was plenty of time for things to build up. A deal was made, and as part of it the agreement was that if enough space could be made, I’d finally be able to lay out a model train set that had been sitting in one closet or another since I was in elementary school. 

So the plan was made. We opened up the garage doors, and started by going from the front to the back. As we went, we’d get a box down, look through it, discard or recycle what we didn’t need, and neatly re-pack the rest. In the process, we were able to condense down about a fifth of the material in the garage. 

Well, we hit a portion in the garage containing a fair amount of the material that came from my dad’s time in the Army. This includes a considerable amount of gear and equipment he was able to muster out with. Dad was away with the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts at the time, so we were basically having to take our best guess as to what was what. Not only did we not know what exactly he had, we also didn’t know where it was. 

Suffice to say that mom was not going to be having a good day. 

Somehow, when my dad mustered out, he managed to muster out with a training dummy used for CPR practice. Because of this, it was designed to look – and feel – as realistic as possible given the technology of the day. Someone also apparently shot at it with a low-caliber weapon at some point, leaving two small bullet holes in the forehead. 

Now, dad has been involved in Scouting since childhood. As an adult, he’s constantly been asked to work with different scout troops at church. So his having a CPR training dummy makes sense, as it’d be something he could use to help train the scouts.

Thing is, mom didn’t know it was out there. 

One of my brothers knew, but he never told us.

So there we were. We were making our way through my dad’s assorted military items when we find what my mom describes as something looking like a body bag. Inside the bag is… the dummy. Mom sees it, sees the bullet holes, and proceeds to freak out. I, meanwhile, maintain my calm, realize what I’m looking at, and work to get mom calm. Cue the phone calls to my dad and bothers. 

Oh, and I never did get that train set out. We cleared out just enough room to empty the storage unit we were renting into the garage. Yeah. 

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Finished my second book, the first omnibus for a manga series known as “Inukami”. How about everyone else?