Closet

I cleaned out my closet today.
This is not a metaphor.
I really did.
Its the end of a season and all of the detrius has got to be organized.
 Ever since child #2 started her science experiments I have been somwhat afraid of the closet. The hall closet.
It went like this......
Something died in our house, something big and gross.
Nothing small could have made this smell.
It was awful.
Take the worst smell you have ever smelled, kill it, leave it under a sunlamp for ten days in a sealed plastic bag and then open the bag one inch from your nose.
Thats about a tenth of what this smell was.
And the worst thing was. I couldnt find it.
It would waft around the house on mysterious invisible air currents and attasck your sinus just when you had relaxed. Your nose hairs would curl up and your nostrils would pinch shut in a little known human adaptive evolutionary skill developed by survivors of mustard gas.
The wife would throw up, #1 would throw up and, this should have been a clue, #2 would look puzzled? as if this smell was not entirely unexpected.
I should have asked her.
But we have all learned that.
I
AM
NOT
SMART.
So, one night I walked in and was struck physically punched in the face by this smell.
It kicked my ass.
I fell to the ground and belatedly realized that the smell was emanating from the closet.
Not even bothering to stand up I begin to clean the closet.
Hold up.
TOM DEFINITION: To CLEAN, def#1 to empty objects out of location and then put them back in no particular order when desired object has been found. def#2 call someone and tell them something is dirty.
So, I was laying on the ground cleaning the closet. The smell getting stronger by the second.
I was trying to understand how something so large as the dead bison so obviously hidden somewhere in my closet could have gotten there.
Thats when I found the little clear plastic bag.
A sandwich bag.
It had something in it.
It was not a sandwich.
It was greenish and blueish and I swear it was moving.
I opened it.
about an inch from my nose.
I am told by people that I normally consider reliable that I squealed in a high pitched voice and leapt from a prone position to a dead sprint outside with a simple twitching motion and was gone, still squealing, in a blur.
I have no memory of this.
The next thing I remember is the stars revolving slowly above me, the concrete seemed quite soft and I was just closing my eyes for a well deserved nap when child #2s adorable face swam into view in front of the stars.
"Why did you throw my xspearamint away? it was almost ready"
I passed out then. The monster and threat to all human life my sweet child had become begining to sob in the distance because I had thrown her death bag away.

I cleaned out my closet today.
Why do I keep the single glove?
The Broken Cricket bat?
I found 10 lunch bags.
A few with lunch still in them.
Stuff.
Piles and piles of stuff.
I used to think that I could just be ZEN.
I cleaned out my closet though.
Realization.
To be zen, your closets have to be clean.