Star seeds

One of my first chores when I took possession of my house was to peel off all the tiny, luminescent stars on the ceiling of The Purple Room. The family's teen-aged daughter had created a quite a little universe, and though her mom had removed many before vacating (she was extremely thoughtful that way), there were still a good fifty stragglers.

Everyone in my family kept exclaiming, "WHY would someone DO something like that," but the reality is, many of the dorm rooms I lived in had star stickers on the ceiling, to which I contributed my own galaxies. It's just one of those things that seems cool at the time, though you forget about them once they're up there. Kind of like real stars when you live in the city.

So, I climbed the ladder in the Purple Room and popped those suckers off with a spackling tool. I missed at least a couple, and you can see their faint outlines in the painted-over ceiling. The stars I freed have now dispersed to the winds. Some stuck in my hair and slipped down the shower drain. Many made the trip in my car back to my parents', like furry spores and rodents traveling the high seas in Old World ships. Now they litter the laundry room floor or show up in the lint catcher. They're spreading through the house, and soon I'll find them in the office, in my food, maybe at YOUR house!