2008-05-07 - 4:09 p.m.

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Ellen (Part Ten)

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"My last roommate, Ms. Sears, smuggled food into the room, hid it and forgot about it for days at a time," Ellen confided in me.

"My grandma use to store food and forget about it as well," I said.

"Grandma Broken Heart?"

"No," I said, "My other grandma, Grandma Cupboard. It was a nickname one of my high school friends gave her after he discovered a half-eaten, shriveled up hot dog in a bowl in her kitchen cupboard. She didn't having a wandering mind, but she wouldn't throw any food out. I'm writing a short story about her. If you like, I could read it to you some time."

"Yes, I think I would like that."

"Grandma Cupboard had pies in her freezer that were decade old. After she cooked them, she labeled them with the date and never threw them out."

"Ms. Sears filled her robe pockets with mashed potatoes on a regular basis."

"Grandma Cupboard never rinsed off plates or bowls prior to loading them into the dishwasher. Her dishwasher didn't drain the dirty water properly; instead, it scattered old food across the surface of everything it was supposedly cleaning. Every place setting she used had at least one clump of organic muck clinging to it. The trick was finding it before it found you."

"Ms. Sears would catch flies under a drinking glass and feed them with pieces of her smuggled meals. Several days later, she would lift up the glass, shoo away the flies and eat the food. She believed that the enzymes the flies vomited assisted her own digestive process."

"Grandma Cupboard once fed me breakfast in the dog's bowl and I swallowed a clump of old dog food while I was eating my frosted flakes."

"Ms. Sears kept one of her bowel movements in a jewelry box under her bed. She thought it might have nutritional value in case the staff ever tried to starve her to death."

"You have got to be kidding me!"

"Okay...I lied about the mashed potatoes."

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