Thursday, January 25, 2007
Hording 101
I am a pack rat. I collect things. Thank god it isn’t furniture! But I do keep a highly organized pile of crap in several drawers in and about the house. Not to mention a couple or 6 of those large Tupperware style tubs. But there is times in my life that I need all of my junk, for instance, this past Monday when I went to the funeral, I needed a tie clip. I haven’t owned a tie clip, or even a tie pin since I was in college and playing football, and then it was a little skull and cross bones tie pin. So when I needed one to keep my tie in place since I didn’t wear my suit…..(because I don’t own a decent overcoat) I thought for about 2.3 seconds and went downstairs and opened one of the Tupperware tubs and viola! There was my dad’s box of crap that he had handed down to me.
In this box of crap lives some pretty funny stuff, like a wooden circa 1960’s “Peter Meter” with funny things written every inch, at the foot mark it just says “warning, this could strangle”….Yeah my Dad is funny. But in this old men’s jewelry box, lived 12-15 tie clips. So I began looking for a good one that would match the tie and look nice. Some of them were discarded due to size, back in the day they wore these super skinny ties, and the clips matched them, so they looked dumb on today’s semi wide ties. I finally picked one and took it upstairs and hit it with Bouby’s silver rag, and put a nice shine on it.
This is just one of the more recent events that have led me to believe that my piles of junk are really good for what you need. I can’t remember how many times someone has asked me for something that they just can’t find anywhere and I surprise them by saying..”Oh I have one of those at home, and I’ll bring it in tomorrow”. The point in this sordid tale of pack rat-ery, is every since I can remember there has been someone in my life that has told me that I am a pack rat and to clean up my crap.
As a kid it was Mom, in High school it was my football coach (Clean up your locker Nightmare! You got shit everywhere!) College it was the occasional roommate…unless they needed something. Oddly enough since I was/am a pack rat, my Mom used to call me and ask me where stuff was even if I hadn’t been home in a year or two, and she would walk to where I told her and lo and behold there it was…whatever “it” was. Then it was girlfriends, and finally my Bouby. She tells me all the time that I have too much junk, and I agree with her I do. And since I love her, I try to keep my collecting to a minimum, but I have on occasion had to clean out certain areas and throw a bunch of shit away. Like two weeks ago before my cousin came in for a two day whirlwind tour. I decided to go through the office and throw out a lot of stuff. A full dumpster worth of old magazines and miscellaneous trinkets that I had jammed in my pockets thinking, “someone might need this sometime”.
So yesterday I asked one of my co-workers what the new toggle switch was hanging out of his dash board was and he replied “It switches my radio and my Sirius satellite radio back and forth”.
Shit, I need that I have a Sirius satellite radio how are you doing that? What is that switch hooked up too?
“An FM modulator”
“You’re kidding I have one of those things in the office at my house, If I get it, will you show me how it works?”
“Sure”
So this morning I go into the office and where my highly organized pile of crap used to be is a almost pristine clean floor and the FM modulator is missing. My brain raced…what the fuck did I do with that?
I looked under stuff, I looked in drawers, I remembered wrapping all of the loose wires into a nice tight bundle and placing it reverently into a white plastic trash bag with a full years worth of Maxim Magazines………and taking said bag out to the dumpster.
Fuck
In this box of crap lives some pretty funny stuff, like a wooden circa 1960’s “Peter Meter” with funny things written every inch, at the foot mark it just says “warning, this could strangle”….Yeah my Dad is funny. But in this old men’s jewelry box, lived 12-15 tie clips. So I began looking for a good one that would match the tie and look nice. Some of them were discarded due to size, back in the day they wore these super skinny ties, and the clips matched them, so they looked dumb on today’s semi wide ties. I finally picked one and took it upstairs and hit it with Bouby’s silver rag, and put a nice shine on it.
This is just one of the more recent events that have led me to believe that my piles of junk are really good for what you need. I can’t remember how many times someone has asked me for something that they just can’t find anywhere and I surprise them by saying..”Oh I have one of those at home, and I’ll bring it in tomorrow”. The point in this sordid tale of pack rat-ery, is every since I can remember there has been someone in my life that has told me that I am a pack rat and to clean up my crap.
As a kid it was Mom, in High school it was my football coach (Clean up your locker Nightmare! You got shit everywhere!) College it was the occasional roommate…unless they needed something. Oddly enough since I was/am a pack rat, my Mom used to call me and ask me where stuff was even if I hadn’t been home in a year or two, and she would walk to where I told her and lo and behold there it was…whatever “it” was. Then it was girlfriends, and finally my Bouby. She tells me all the time that I have too much junk, and I agree with her I do. And since I love her, I try to keep my collecting to a minimum, but I have on occasion had to clean out certain areas and throw a bunch of shit away. Like two weeks ago before my cousin came in for a two day whirlwind tour. I decided to go through the office and throw out a lot of stuff. A full dumpster worth of old magazines and miscellaneous trinkets that I had jammed in my pockets thinking, “someone might need this sometime”.
So yesterday I asked one of my co-workers what the new toggle switch was hanging out of his dash board was and he replied “It switches my radio and my Sirius satellite radio back and forth”.
Shit, I need that I have a Sirius satellite radio how are you doing that? What is that switch hooked up too?
“An FM modulator”
“You’re kidding I have one of those things in the office at my house, If I get it, will you show me how it works?”
“Sure”
So this morning I go into the office and where my highly organized pile of crap used to be is a almost pristine clean floor and the FM modulator is missing. My brain raced…what the fuck did I do with that?
I looked under stuff, I looked in drawers, I remembered wrapping all of the loose wires into a nice tight bundle and placing it reverently into a white plastic trash bag with a full years worth of Maxim Magazines………and taking said bag out to the dumpster.
Fuck
