DROSS POTS
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
Dross Pots can be found in most human habitats. They are essential items which house treasures gathered by their owners over many years.
They come in many forms from a humorously ugly mug given as a gift but never intended to hold coffee, a biscuit barrel or cookie jar which sadly never holds its intended contents because they are always consumed before they have chance to be stored, to an ornamental pot given by a much loved maiden aunt and tucked out of view because it could never possibly conform to anyone’s sense of taste.
Many humans, when setting up a new habitat, vigorously resist the use of Dross Pots but find they have to submit to the inevitable when they realise they have built a Dross Corner (an ugly appendage which you wouldn’t want your mother to see).
The variations of treasures kept in Dross Pots are innumerable and often very personal, but amongst them you would generally find small keys (for long-lost padlocks); buttons; pen tops; screws; foreign coins; hair grips and drawing pins (thumb tacks) - which are specifically there to drive their shafts behind the fingernails of anyone who dares to plunge their hand into the depths of the pot.
When the inhabitants of the abode start to breed the Dross Pot comes into its own. Alongside the aforementioned items are soon added such things as nappy (diaper) pins; stubs of wax crayons; small plastic cracker toys; a pebble or two; essential bits from board games; hair slides or ribbons and lots of “I am 4/5/6” badges.
Unchecked, the Dross Pot’s contents will grow at an alarming rate as owners seek a “safe place” to store the minutiae of life, compelling them to start a 2nd or 3rd Dross Pot or even, in extreme circumstances, a Dross Drawer.
The interesting thing about the Dross Pot is its ability to deny all knowledge of an item specifically placed in its care for safe-keeping. If the owner ever needs to retrieve the item desperately enough to up-end the Pot and spill its dusty, murky contents all over a nice clean work-surface, they will be re-united with items they desperately needed last week but they will NEVER find the item of their immediate desire.
They come in many forms from a humorously ugly mug given as a gift but never intended to hold coffee, a biscuit barrel or cookie jar which sadly never holds its intended contents because they are always consumed before they have chance to be stored, to an ornamental pot given by a much loved maiden aunt and tucked out of view because it could never possibly conform to anyone’s sense of taste.
Many humans, when setting up a new habitat, vigorously resist the use of Dross Pots but find they have to submit to the inevitable when they realise they have built a Dross Corner (an ugly appendage which you wouldn’t want your mother to see).
The variations of treasures kept in Dross Pots are innumerable and often very personal, but amongst them you would generally find small keys (for long-lost padlocks); buttons; pen tops; screws; foreign coins; hair grips and drawing pins (thumb tacks) - which are specifically there to drive their shafts behind the fingernails of anyone who dares to plunge their hand into the depths of the pot.
When the inhabitants of the abode start to breed the Dross Pot comes into its own. Alongside the aforementioned items are soon added such things as nappy (diaper) pins; stubs of wax crayons; small plastic cracker toys; a pebble or two; essential bits from board games; hair slides or ribbons and lots of “I am 4/5/6” badges.
Unchecked, the Dross Pot’s contents will grow at an alarming rate as owners seek a “safe place” to store the minutiae of life, compelling them to start a 2nd or 3rd Dross Pot or even, in extreme circumstances, a Dross Drawer.
The interesting thing about the Dross Pot is its ability to deny all knowledge of an item specifically placed in its care for safe-keeping. If the owner ever needs to retrieve the item desperately enough to up-end the Pot and spill its dusty, murky contents all over a nice clean work-surface, they will be re-united with items they desperately needed last week but they will NEVER find the item of their immediate desire.
