The Jar
By David Barth
This story was written on Good Friday, April 14, 2006 as the result of a minor event. For this story, I turned a minor event into a catastrophe. This story is
loosely (very loosely) based on two persons and an event. Some exaggeration has crept into the story to skew the actual facts.
Very rarely does a situation present itself that compels me to sit down and write a story based on it. The only story I wrote in 2005 was "The Bond."
This is the only story I wrote in 2006. To protect the anonymity of the principal character in the story, I have changed her first name,
which is the name of a bird, to "Finch." It is only slightly coincidental that her real name and this nom de mademoiselle have the same number of letters.
It was a very quiet afternoon where I worked as a temporary contractor. My job was to manipulate data using a desktop computer. It was a dream job because my
supervisor and my coworkers were very likable, pleasant, and fun to work with.
Because it was Good Friday, management had allowed employees to leave work early. A few were still at work, as I was. Suddenly, the quiet was shattered by a
loud crash. Instinctively, I shut my eyes, ducked my head, and threw my hands over my face to protect them from whatever had happened. Then quiet returned.
You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. I slowly, hesitatingly, opened my eyes, not knowing what kind of carnage I might see. Amazingly, I didn't see any
blood, but the floor was covered with glass shards. At first, I thought that the large plate glass windows along the side of the building had imploded into the room.
That would explain the loud crash and all of the glass on the floor.
Then I spotted Finch across the room. She was slightly bent over with a look of chagrin on her face, and I may have been imagining it, but I think she was blushing.
I rose from my chair, and as I did so, the wheels crunched on glass as it rolled backward. I gingerly picked my way toward Finch, sidestepping the larger chunks of
glass, the soles of my shoes crunching as I walked. When I reached Finch, I determined that she was uninjured, and it soon became clear what had
happened.
Finch has a sweet tooth, and she spied the glass jar with candy in it on the desk of a coworker we shall call "the candy girl." The candy girl, who had already left
work, always kept a jar of candy on her desk for people, like Finch, who desired a sweet from time to time. The candy jar was a family heirloom, presented to
the candy girl by her beloved grandmother. Finch had walked to the candy girl’s desk and thrust her hand into the jar to pull out a fistful of candy. Filled with candy,
her fist was too big to pull out of the jar. Finch was like the squirrel that reached into a hole in a tree to grab a nut, then couldn't pull its paw out because it
was clutching the nut. In the parable, the squirrel starves to death because it refuses to let go of the nut. In a sense, this was Finch's predicament. She didn’t
want to reach into the jar twice for two small handfuls of candy. She wanted one large handful. So, Finch pulled hard and her fist popped out of the jar. Unfortunately,
she lost control of the jar, and it crashed, splattering glass and candy all over the floor.
About that time, an alert coworker phoned facilities office and requested someone to come clean up all the glass on the floor. A clean-up person arrived with a
broom and a dust pan. When he saw the glass covering the floor, he quickly departed, returning in a few minutes with a crew of six pushing wheel barrows and
equipped with shovels. The cleanup was finished in two and a half hours.
Finch knew about the importance of the jar to the candy girl. When the candy girl looked at the jar, tears welled up in her eyes as it brought back memories of
childhood, good times, bad times, important times, her family, and most of all, her wonderful grandmother. When Finch looked at the jar, all she could see were
scrumptious pieces of candy waiting to be popped into her mouth.
Finch began to worry about what the candy girl would think when, on Monday morning, she found her family heirloom as gone, forever. In a sense, the jar
represented all of her dreams, her past, and her future. All of it was gone. Finch was fearful that this would be too much for the candy girl to take, and Finch
didn't want to think about it any more. She absolutely had to replace the jar and have it sitting on the candy girl's desk before she arrived on Monday
morning.
Finch was frantic. She quickly left work, her mind nearly dizzy with concern about replacing the jar. The first place she went to look for a replacement was Walmart.
It was almost a magical relief that she found a jar that looked almost exactly like the candy girl's. Finch squinted her eyes, trying to recall the exact shape and size
of the heirloom.
"Yes!" she thought. "This would make a suitable replacement." The new jar cost a buck and a quarter. She also bought some replacement candy so that the jar
wouldn't look any different from the way it was when the candy girl had left for the weekend.
On Monday morning, Finch arrived at work early to ensure that she could have the candy jar set up before the candy girl arrived. She set the jar out and filled it with
the right amount of candy. It looked perfect.
Shortly, the candy girl arrived. She seemed to sense that something was slightly different in her workspace, but everything seemed normal. And there was her
grandmother's candy jar, just as she had left it on Friday. In the following days and weeks, the candy girl lost that sense that something was different in her
cubicle.
No one who knows about the jar incident has had the heart to tell the candy girl that her heirloom is gone; that Finch smashed it into a million pieces; that the
images the jar brought to her are also smashed into a million pieces. The candy girl has not noticed the "Made in China" sticker on the bottom of her "150-year
old family heirloom." And when she looks at the jar, tears well up in her eyes as it brings back memories of childhood, good times, bad times, important times,
her family, and most of all, her wonderful grandmother.