Sunday morning. Newspapers are fat with inserts and coupons to be clipped - so I'll run to get scissors and start clipping.
Scissors. Isn't that a funny word? Scissors have been an important tool in my life. I admired my mother's dexterity in cutting thread and cloth, paper, herbs or a bouquet of flowers. It is remarkable how many kinds of scissors there were in the house where I grew up. My mother had dressmaker scissors, pinking shears, buttonhole scissors and kitchen shears as well as stork-shaped Chatelaines. My dad's one-piece Egyptian-style garden scissors were used for trimming beds of iris and tulips. He also had twig cutters and branch loppers, tin snips and some he called 'sheep shears,' though we never had any sheep.
After I learned to hold scissors and cut scraps of cloth or paper, I spent many hours cutting out paper dolls and baby doll clothes before advancing to making my own clothes, cutting fancy doilies, decoupage or paper silhouettes. There is such pride in creating something interesting from plain cloth or paper.
Twice, I got in a bit of mix up with scissors. Once while holding sharp scissors, I stabbed myself in the thigh as I pulled a chair up to sit on. Another time, although I was a good speller, I couldn't remember how to spell scissors. It didn't look right after writing it a dozen times, so I tried to look it up in a dictionary. How do you find a word in the dictionary when you cannot spell it? I looked up 'shears' in the Sears Roebuck & Co. catalog.
Scissors found. Time to clip the coupons - although it is a useless exercise. Reviewing the last batch, I crumple those out of date to make room for the new ones. I have good intentions for enjoying a discount, thrift and economical household management. The reality is, coupon clipping is just a ritual - perhaps a subconscious need to ply scissors - as I am too old for cutting out paper dolls.
Scissors. Do they bring back memories for you? Tell me. I'd like to know.
Nancy yTe \
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