RemebeRED: The Box

            Finally! I thought I’d be on that shelf forever. Oh sure, she’s taken me down every once in a while—like at Halloween or if someone needs to borrow some stage blood or spirit gum. But it’s been ages since she’s brought me to a theatre. That’s where I belong, you know. I don’t belong on the top shelf of a closet with that dress she’s never going to fit into again and her son’s baptism outfit. I belong in the theatre making people look older, or younger, or tired, or scary. 

            She bought me back in the early nineties. That’s why my colors are so garish—teal and raspberry. They’re eighties colors really. She picked me up on clearance at the Poughkeepsie Jamesway and filled me with makeup from Max Factor and Ben Nye and Mehron. Before she found me she was using an ugly old fishing tackle box. Can you imagine?

            When she took me down on Saturday, I knew this time was different. She didn’t just rifle through me for one or two things. She cleaned my brushes. She threw away makeup that was past its prime. She emptied everything out and cleaned me with Clorox wipes. Those stung a little. But now I feel really sharp.

            She bought new makeup. She’s gotten smarter over the years. She didn’t bother buying a whole kit full of things she’s never going to need. How many skeins of crepe hair has she thrown away over the years? How much nose putty? This time she ordered a couple of containers of base and bought eye shadow and lipstick at Target. She even bought something called eyelid primer. Apparently in the new millennium, one needs to prime one’s eyelids.

I’m on my way! She left me on a chair in the living room next to some shopping bags. I bet they’re filled with costumes. I wonder who I’ll turn her into this time. Usually, I just make sure her pasty Irish skin doesn’t get washed out under the stage lights. But once I got to make her look like an old lady. Another time she was a witch with green skin and purple lips. I’ll be there for whatever she needs. I’m returning to the theatre. That’s where I belong.

Do objects have a memory? Does a rocking chair hold the essence of the snuggles it has witnessed? Does a pottery mug remember the comforting warmth it offered a struggling soul?
The dictionary defines personification as “the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.”
Now it’s your turn to tell a piece of your story from the point of view of an object who bore witness in 400 words or less.