Extra P in Charlottesville, Virginia found this note in his office break room. He draws our attention to two sections in particular: “the ‘let there be closure’ line, which seems more appropriate for a break-up note, and the ‘mark an X if you threw it away’ part, which reminds me of grade school mash notes. Besides, what did our local kleptomaniac want with a jelly jar full of water, anyway?”
related: next time, go for the fiji?
132 responses so far ↓
#1
eddy
X
Sorry ’bout that. I like throwing away jars full of water.
Jun 10, 2009 at 11:40 pm rating: +13
#2
Katie
Must have been some jar…
Jun 10, 2009 at 11:42 pm rating: +3
#3
park rose
It had a water tight lid. You’ve got your closure right there.
Jun 10, 2009 at 11:52 pm rating: +62
#4
park rose
Of course the ‘let there be closure’ line, seems more appropriate for a break-up note. She’s missing her jelly jar. What more do you expect? Heart is the lonely hunter…
Jun 10, 2009 at 11:54 pm rating: +5
#5
TheOldSchool
Did the “Missing jelly jar
please return”
stationery come from Trader Joe’s?
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:02 am rating: +10
#6
oi!
title printed, note hand written. I wonder what happened in between?
the night before last what? I mean she crossed out night so it must be something else.
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:04 am rating: +9
#7
TheOldSchool
Pardon me for being for being slightly squeamish, but am I the only one who finds it distastefully awkward that this missing jar note was sent by someone called “extra p”?
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:06 am rating: +13
#8
park rose
I love this note.
The night before last
night…She realises this is her opus. She notices the redundancy and strikes out the offending word. She realises that if her appeal to all the thieves of water-filled jelly jars out there is to be taken seriously, she better get the phrasing right. However, the jelly jar was not full of water, the dish rack was. Why couldn’t she have waited just one more night, committed one more night to thorough and careful proof-reading, before she exposed her note of lovelorn lost to the office break room? Then, and only then, might the world have sat up and paid attention to her plea, her entreaties. Then and only then might there have been a chance of the beloved jelly jar being found and returned.
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:07 am rating: +12
#9
oi!
did she provide a pen too?
If not her jelly jar will never ever rest in peace.
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:13 am rating: +8
#10
natewrites
Lordy. Let’s not forget the upward handwriting. What. The. fuck. I guess it’s spunky. The “X” marks the spot, very covert!!
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:17 am rating: +2
#11
natewrites
LOL. What about the uphill writing? What’s that all about. And the fill in the blank, that’s classic!
Closure’s very important when in the grieving process of a jelly jar. It took me months to get over mine when it ran off.
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:19 am rating: +4
#12
racerx2233
I am seeing her find the jar broken in the trash and she scoops it gingerly into an old cigar box lined with one of her favorite satin slips. She then buries it in the rose garden under a hand made grave marker which reads…
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:43 am rating: +10
#13
plausibletheories
I love that the note is updated every day, just so that everyone knows EXACTLY WHICH NIGHT the jam jar full of vodka was stolen/misplaced/trashed.
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:48 am rating: +9
#14
TheOldSchool
I don’t mean to sound cold, but I’d like the headline better if it read, “the polarized stationery finally comes in handy.”
But maybe that’s just me. (All of my stationery is polarized.)
Jun 11, 2009 at 1:07 am rating: +2
#15
park rose
What, with Virginia in this note, and a possible she-wolf in the last (the hula-skirt gave it away), I feel an Edward Albee play coming on…
Jun 11, 2009 at 1:16 am rating: +4
#16
TheOldSchool
“Hula’s Afraid of Virginia Lamu?”
Jun 11, 2009 at 1:23 am rating: +10
#17
leftfoot
uh…. duh…. ask the cleaning staff..
usually they are informed to throw people’s shit away that’s left abandoned. If you didn’t want your stupid jar tossed, then you should have taken it home.
silly bint.
Jun 11, 2009 at 1:46 am rating: +1
#18
Liz
this has got to be one of my favorites! “Please let me know so there can be closure” — I’m going to use that one with my kids
Jun 11, 2009 at 1:55 am rating: +3
#19
park rose
Okay, I finally figured out where the line from 12.1 was coming from. LJS keeps the beat by thumping his peg leg on the wooden floor. Whether he actually has a peg leg is a moot point.
Look, I know it was a sealed Jelly Jar full of water that was stolen from the dish rack, but it just didn’t complement the rhyme scheme
Jun 11, 2009 at 5:33 am rating: +5
#20
anglophile
What’s really going on there was that the jar was in the embryonic stage of a Molotov Cocktail, filled with gas, not water, waiting for its dish-towel fuse. The notewriter is annoyed, because now she has to wait until she empties another jelly jar before she can burn the place down, and that’s going to take a while, because how many crumpets can one eat in a week?
Jun 11, 2009 at 6:44 am rating: +13
#21
Woman on the Verge
Oedipus is mourning the loss of the jelly jar his mother had lovingly filled with breast milk for him. How can he possibly get his free refills now?
Jun 11, 2009 at 6:48 am rating: +4
#22
Woman on the Verge
Imagine the torment if someone puts an “O” on the line. Will spontaneous tic-tac-toe ruin the chances of closure?
Jun 11, 2009 at 6:49 am rating: +15
#23
stickman
meh
Jun 11, 2009 at 7:09 am rating: +1
#24
aaa
This reminds me of A Christmas Story.
Miss Shields: Now I know that some of you put Flick up to this, but he has refused to say who. But those who did it know their blame, and I’m sure that the guilt you feel is far worse than any punishment you might receive. Now, don’t you feel terrible? Don’t you feel remorse for what you have done? Well, that’s all I’m going to say about poor Flick.
Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] Adults loved to say things like that but kids knew better. We knew darn well it was always better not to get caught.
Jun 11, 2009 at 8:03 am rating: +8
#25
aaa
Don’t they always tell you not to leave your valuables in a place where people can get at them? Granted, I’m not sure how monetarily valuable a jelly jar is, but darnit, that jar sure meant a lot to whoever wrote that note!
Jun 11, 2009 at 8:08 am rating: +4
#26
claw71
September 23, 2011
“Well, doctor, I’ve been obsessed about collecting and locking away jelly jars ever since that really cool one with the water-tight lid was stolen from me.”
Jun 11, 2009 at 8:59 am rating: +5
#27
Canthz_B
Typed opening and handwritten details?
Must be a pretty severe case of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!
Jun 11, 2009 at 9:19 am rating: +1
#28
T to O
♫ When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
With Jelly jars of water, Let it be.
Though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they might see
A jelly jar of water, Let it be. ♪
Jun 11, 2009 at 9:22 am rating: +12
#29
claw71
As a Gen-Xer I have come to hate the term “closure”. I understand the importance of resolving things but to me the 90s was the “closure” decade. It’s like everybody my age wanted a cookie. I don’t know why. I blame post-goth, grunge wannabes like Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder. So much vying for validation while acting like they were too cool to care. A bunch of whimpering pansies we were.
I suppose that’s what happens when your Grandparents start browbeating you with tales of how great they were. Surviving the Great Depression, fighting back the scourge of NAZI Germany, and then getting called right back into the Cold War. They were the ultimate patriots and they never let you forget it. Then Tom Brokaw had to come along and jerk them off with his tome, The Greatest Generation. Thanks a lot Tom, I can’t speak for everybody else but my Grandparents wore that shit like a badge. Read this book, claw71. Read it and understand. Understand that you owe us. You owe us everything. Now run to the store and get me a big box of Depends.
At least they died before they sucked every bit of the zest for life out of me. They did a hell of a job convincing me that the world was going to end in THE YEAR 2000, which is why I never really felt the need to excel in my studies or worry about holding down a good job, but they kicked the bucket before I blew my brains out like Cobain. That’s why he did it, you know. He was a GOD but when he told his Grandmother she laughed in his face and told him he’d never be as good as Mel Torme. His parents were no better. Our generation wrote the book on Rock music, Curt. We don’t know why you’re wasting your time.
Our parents didn’t help matters much. They managed to turn dodging the draft and smoking dope into some sort of revolution. Basically they partied for 10 years but to hear them tell it, they were in the trenches making the world a better place for our undeserving asses. We weren’t worthy and we never would be. Our Grandparents agreed.
So Gen-X grew up feeling like crap and half-believing that we were all going to die in some horrific apocalyptic disaster in THE YEAR 2000. We were worthless and we’d never amount to anything.
As we got older we pierced our faces, shoplifted stuff on Rodeo Drive and started our quest for something called “closure”. By the late 90s it was a fucking buzz word. If Starbucks didn’t give you skim milk you called their customer service line for “closure”. We fought with our parents at our grandparents funerals in hopes of reaching “closure”. If your roomie borrowed your socks you were forced to pout until he gave you “closure”.
Now it’s 2009 and most of Generation X is staring down the barrel of the big FOUR OH. Some of us are already there. We’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that life is going to keep rolling whether we get “closure” or not, so most of us just plug along.
We don’t try to make the younger generations feel bad even though it’s painfully obvious they’re a bunch of spoiled little punks who don’t know what it was like to live in an era before you could watch HULU or listen to MP3s on your phone. Back in our day, you had to listen to music on a portable CD player that would skip every time you moved. One second you’re jamming to If I could turn back time and the next Will Smith was Gettin Jiggy Widit. Phones where as big as shoe boxes, weighed as much as a cinder block and they gave you cancer instantly. All you got in return was a shitty phone call that got dropped before you could get any “closure.”
Jun 11, 2009 at 9:46 am rating: +26
#30
Eric
Perhaps the “put an x here” was to help keep it anonymous. Writing “yes” might give away who it was by virtue of handwriting…
Jun 11, 2009 at 9:52 am rating: +1
#31
jenny h
I like the typed portion accompanied by the hand-written complaint, like the missing jelly jar has its own stationary in case of instances like these.
Jun 11, 2009 at 10:07 am rating: +3
#32
aaa
Am I the only one wondering what was in that jelly jar before it was left to soak?
Jun 11, 2009 at 10:44 am rating: +3
#33
T.U.M.
Obviously class warfare. Where I come from, a jelly jar is a dish. Some toffee-nosed middle-class nob probably thought it was only a transient container for storebought confitures, and buys his dishes empty in a department store or something.
Jun 11, 2009 at 10:56 am rating: +3
#34
GhostWriter
If our notewriter would just open the breakroom refrigerator, he would see his jar being put to good use; preserving a cat’s head.
Jun 11, 2009 at 11:13 am rating: +4
#35
Neeners
I love this note. It takes me back to elementary school and junior high days when we passed notes and made little ‘check off’ boxes for the receiver.
The first line reminds me of that hand clapping game we used to play in grade school.
‘Not last night but the night before, twenty four robbers came knocking at my door, as I ran out, they ran in, ……. and stole my f$%ckin water tight jelly jar” Sorry couldn’t make it rhyme.
In the case of the MIA jelly jar: For gods sake, someone please give this person closure will ya. It is hell not knowing if your jelly jar will be returned or if it is ok, or (sob) broken somewhere in a back alley.
Jun 11, 2009 at 11:47 am rating: +1
#36
NewMoon
Jordon?
Did u take my jelly jar?
Can we meet for coffee?
love, Meg
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:29 pm rating: +2
#37
oi!
why she needs closure with jelly jar? I dont wanna go there. yesterday’s Equus/Pasiphae experience is traumatic enough.
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:33 pm rating: +4
#38
Alicia
That jelly jar water was fucking delicious?
Jun 11, 2009 at 12:50 pm rating: +1
#39
oi
Missing jelly jar: please return.
If she is asking missing jelly jar to come back she should be more expressive. She should let him know that he is being missed terribly and nobody will mention his disappearance if he returns.
Jun 11, 2009 at 1:39 pm rating: +4
#40
Geek Goddess
In reading quickly through the intro in order to get to the actual PAN, I misread it as “virginia found this note in his office break room”. I immediately blamed virginia’s parents for giving their son such a girlie name, and causing him to steal his co-workers’ cherished but otherwise valueless possessions. There is no closure for having grown up as a boy named ‘virginia’; why should there be closure for those with more gender-appropriate names?
Jun 11, 2009 at 2:14 pm rating: +4
#41
Kellye
I want someone to scrawl NEVER!!! across this entire note.
Then to tape a lovingly-clipped ransom note over it, saying that the jelly jar of
watervodka will be returned in exchange for two million unmarked packets of Sweet & Low.Jun 11, 2009 at 2:18 pm rating: +4
#42
Bradley
Why was he soaking a jelly jar? What was he going to use it for? Why not do something normal like buy a damn food container? This passes the line into cheap-ass in my book, and I don’t like it. I probably would’ve thrown his jar away if I had been there too.
Jun 11, 2009 at 2:23 pm rating: +1
#43
Patrick
Cville Va, holla’.
Let’s not stereotype all of Virginia based on this note. Charlottesville has as many whiny yuppies and dirty hippies as moonshine-swillin’ yokels.
Jun 11, 2009 at 3:29 pm rating: +1
#44
a non-eMuss
i have to say this must have been a jarring experience for all involved (sorry had to)
Jun 11, 2009 at 4:56 pm rating: +2
#45
ClickClack
The bottler did it.
Jun 11, 2009 at 5:35 pm rating: +6
#46
hungrygrrl
Oh god this sounds like something my ex roommate would have written. However, SHE didn’t have a job, just an unhealthy emotional attachment to meaningless “possessions” like Tupperware and candles. And jelly jars, I’m sure.
Jun 11, 2009 at 9:32 pm rating: +2
#47
sarah
Dear OCD,
I am sorry for throwing away your jar. But the truth of the matter is, it had to be done. Your note failed to mention the fact that you have at least 40 OTHER old jelly jars that I keep finding in various places around the kitchen.
It is weird for many, many reasons.
And before you ask, yes, I also threw out the pickle jars.
Jun 13, 2009 at 1:45 pm rating: 0
#48
word association
one man one cup. i wouldnt want it back.
Jun 16, 2009 at 7:33 am rating: 0
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