I had sat around long enough blissfully enjoying a prior-obligation-free Saturday when I decided that I'd try to tackle the five or six boxes of junk and "memories" taking up some valuable space in my hall closet.
The boxes are varying sizes, from tiny to men's shoebox size, and I went for the smallest one first, thinking I could get through quickly and be done with it.
Not so fast...
Turns out that little box was holding about 8 years worth of............ticket stubs.
Now maybe that isn't such a hard thing to get rid of, you say. I mean, I dragged over the recycling bin and had every intention of making quick work of it.
Until questions like this began popping into my head:
- Will my (hypothetical VERY future) children be pissed if I throw away a Weezer stub from the first leg of their infamous comeback tour?
- Is there ANY value that I might be tossing out with a Pointfest 10 ticket signed by two members of Goldfinger? Surely there must!
- Did I REALLY go to a Foreigner concert? WTF?!?
And so on....
I think that it's questions like these that turn people into obsessive hoarders. I consider myself pretty good at purging, and the one side of my brain says "Let it go! Out with the old, in with the new, get rid of all that old energy and make room for new memories." But the other side still says "How dare you consider getting rid of tangible proof of your formative years, no matter how minuscule! This is the fodder of social anthropologists of the future! How selfish to destroy a potential cache that might allow for a glimpse of early 21st century popular culture!"
In the end, it pretty much all wound up in the recycling. But I can't help but hold on to a small envelope with some of the standouts. What if....you know?
Next stop: 10 years worth of greeting cards, invitations, and announcements. Woo boy!
4 comments:
I'm so glad it's not just me.
Haha! Nope, you are NOT alone :)
Since the "history" question is totally valid -- you get to keep the one or two most vivid mementos of events that you actually remember. If you've already forgotten the event, the paperwork has to go!
(I may blog about this from another angle, so thank you for the idea as well as for the entertaining prose.)
Wende, thanks! I agree, it isn't worth holding on to if the item STILL doesn't help you remember. I did a lot better with the cards and stuff, and now it's all condensed into one small box. With room to grow.
And absolutely blog about it! They say imitation is the highest form of flattery!
AND - no one has ever called my blogs "prose" so thanks for that, too :)
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