“When we seek closure, we reach out to the zipper. it keeps us warm, prevents things from falling out of purses and lets us cram way too much into our suitcases. When it gets stuck, so do we. Without it, life would be filled with the endless ennui of buttoning and snapping.” — Helen Anders
Today’s writing prompt: Zipper
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karen53
Zipper: the name was created “to designate the sound of the mechanism when being successfully fastened or unfastened.”
Up the ladder, climb the scale. Have you ever noticed how, as a zipper makes its ascent, it sounds like it is trickling up a keyboard? Getting higher and lighter as it makes its way up. The teeth clicking together in evermore soprano notes as it reaches its final destination. And then, when you unzip, it’s the exact opposite. As the teeth unclench and burst apart the tone gets deeper and slower. A basso finale.
It is uncanny, if it’s true. But maybe it is just the power of suggestion; a trick that your mind plays on your ears. The word zipper suggests movement and motion. A T-bar inching up a snowy mountain, ticking with anticipation to the peak. The slow, methodical tocking of a timer winding down as the pot begins to bubble.
As the saying goes, “the course of the zipper never did run smooth” (with apologies to Mr. Shakespeare). The zipper on my favorite pair of jeans is a temperamental diva. Some days she trills up the scale like the ingénue of an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical. Those are good days. Skinny days. On some mornings, usually following an evening of gluttonous debauchery, (I never should have had that second piece of pie) my zipper will grunt and groan (no wait, that’s me), start and stop, protest and threaten to disband altogether. Nothing zippy about that. The zipper pouts and makes faces until it is relieved of duty, and then it joyfully skips downward, almost gleeful. It has been set free.
So really, I suppose, the sound of a zipper is all in the eye, or ear, of the beholder.
mcullen Post author
So much fun Karen. This is delightful, fantastic writing. I love where your imagination took you. Your writing on the zipper will make me smile all day! Thanks for posting.
PamH
Concerto for zipper and orchestra. The possibility never occurred to me until reading your piece. Wonderful writing.