Ricki's Bed

   One of the perks of having a son-in-law who\se occupation is doing refurbishing and construction work is that sometimes well-to-do clients give him their "old" furniture. And sometimes he gives that almost-as-good-as-new stuff to us.

   So tonight I returned home at 11 pm, only to find my exhausted son-in-law schlepping  (dragging) new beds up the three flights of stairs to our apartment.. He had mentioned a few days ago that he could give me a new bed for what used to be Ricki's room, a room that "Y", my current army son, uses on weekends. I jumped at the chance, because the old bed was absolutely decrepit.

    However, the biggest drawback to the old bed was its weight. It had a built-in drawer that made it extremely heavy. And in Ricki's narrow room, moving the bed a bit (to clean) was a real chore. Cleaning thoroughly beneath it was nigh impossible, and I only attempted that once a year, before Passover. To move the bed meant removing my computer and it's table from Ricki's room, and then pushing the bed from side to side in the narrow half-a-room-sized space. And even like this, there was an inch or two of floor space that I could only clean by throwing water under the bed, and trying to swish the dirt out with the flow of water.

   But tonight my son-in-law had already dismembered the old bed, and the room was empty, the new bed not having been put in yet. There was, obviously, a whole pile of dirt and dust on the floor, and I went to get the broom. I wondered if maybe I would find in the dust pile on of Ricki's long-last golden earing.

   No such luck. Only the last remains of some candy wrappers.