cooking with one of my six-pack of grandies

at my daughter’s house

using lots of pans

taking them out was so easy

putting them back in

no so much

we kept moving them

rearranging them

like a giant 3-d puzzle

they fit in there before

they just kept blocking us

from closing the drawer

finally we found a way to make them all fit

tried to push the drawer shut

except

it was such a tight fit

that

one of the pans 

popped up

somehow flew behind the drawer

when we tried our new configuration

no way to pull the drawer out

everything screwed in tight

drawer refused to open further

with only a very narrow space behind the drawer

we tried all kinds of solutions

to reach and retrieve it

useless tools

fail

giant chopstick method

fail

reaching with small fingers

fail

logic and reasoning

double fail

 magnet on a heavy string

was our next idea

probably didn’t help

 we were sitting on the floor

laughing

now sweating

determined

we would win this battle

crack this puzzle

finally laid upside down on the floor

looked way up under the bottom drawer 

 saw some yellow plastic thingamajigs

attached to the runners

we tried squeezing those

one on each side

at the same time

and voila!

it allowed the drawer to move forward 

like entering alladin’s secret cave

guessing the right password

  saved the day

rescued the pan

learned something too.

now, about the drawer above it……

—

‘for every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”‘

-H.L. Mencken