Paper Shredders

My paper shredder died.

We gave it a farewell and buried it in the back yard after saying a few words.

Well, no not really. It’s still sitting here in the office taking up space. I think I’m holding on that it might make a comeback and I’ll get though the last few sheets until shredders are back in stock in stores locally.

But, the death of the paper shredder reminded me of a grandma story. More specifically shopping for a paper shredder reminded me of the story because I found these amazing things calling lubricating sheets that you send through a paper shredder to lube it up and help it last longer. Amazing.

The last easter before she passed my aunt, uncle, my family, and my mom were having Easter dinner at my grandma’s house. As we typically did because it was easier for her to not travel. We cooked all the food and brought it or I went up early and cooked food. However, Easter was not my meal. I’m pretty sure that was also the year I went “I’m not bringing shit. I’ll bring myself.” This was in retaliation for being given items to bring only to show up with it prepared and have someone else bring the same damn thing and then told to bring this food item that I’m not all that fond of back home and eat it for a week.

Ugg.

I went no more! I’ll bring NOTHING! or something extremely random that I know my kids will eat. Such as pudding cups, cheese quesadillas or a bag of Doritos.

But that brings us back to the shredder. My uncle is bringing in food when all of a sudden he walks in with a new paper shedder. I was sitting at the table and went a paper shredder? He says “Yes, last time we were up she said it broke so we grabbed a new one.” Oh, okay. Nothing out of the ordinary here right? Paper shredders kick the bucket all the time.

Easter continues on as normal. I casually mention the paper shredder because we had been going up there on and off and I thought grandma would have asked myself, the neighbor, or the cleaning person to throw it in the trash. I was curious why it was was still there since the discovery that it had died was some time ago. My aunt goes oh wait until you hear about why it broke.

My interest if peaked! Consider it a raised eyebrow, how is a story of a dead paper shredder interesting. You use them, they crap out.

The shredder was having issues because it needed to be lubed, but who knew there were amazing things of lubrication sheets for shredders. No, we just shove all that paper through until it freaking dies choked on sawdust like paper shreds. Grandma’s doing her shreds and it stops.

It’s dead.

Well, maybe not dead dead. Sometimes they lock up and after several hours come back to life.

It smelled of burnt paper and was smoking a wee bit. Like they do when you’ve used them for too long.

But grandma was concerned so she grabbed a glass of water and poured it down the shredder slit. There may or mayn’t have been sparks.

Then it sits. For awhile. Weeks possibly. We had been visiting several times and the dead shredder wasn’t ever mentioned. Until the day my Aunt and Uncle went to visit. My uncle goes to shred some random piece of paper. Sees the shredder still sitting next to the writing desk next to the outlet. Just as he’s about to put the paper through my grandma goes,

“oh, you might not want to use that. I think it’s broken.”

It’s broken?

“uh….yeah. I maaaaay have dumped water on it.”

oooh. Something spilled on it?

“No. I poured water in it because it wasn’t working right.”

The dead shredder then sat there after this happened for weeks until Easter rolled around and a new shredder magically appeared (from my aunt and uncle).