CSotD: Stuff happens
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The Lockhorns hit on a timely theme, given that I just got back from a week at my youngest's, looked around my apartment with fresh eyes and said, "Where did all this crap come from?"
No Nehru jackets, but plenty of other stuff that evokes the same "Are you kidding me?" response, once you've really stopped and looked at it.
For example, I carried a typewriter around until a move in 2009, when I realized that I hadn't used it in more than 20 years. I went to wordprocessing in 1984, and, at the time, held on to the typewriter for filling out forms, which made sense for a few years. But not many. I finally pitched it and couldn't believe I had kept it for so long.
So Leroy gives up on the Nehru jacket and I give up on the typewriter and we're both somewhat less burdened for it all.
Still, I imagine that the Lockhorns' basement and attic remain well-stocked with the detritus of their 64 years together.
For all the jokes about the imposition of helping a friend move, until you've helped your parents move, pal, you ain't seen nothin'. It's like a neat, well-organized episode of "Hoarders."
Just as she and I were both turning 50, a friend broke up with her Significant Other and decided it was time to get her life on a new track. So she held a garage sale and then packed the trunk and back seat of her car. Anything that didn't fit either went to charity or the dump.
She split for the West Coast while I contemplated, and envied, the mobility of someone who, at our age, could still get it all down to what fit in the trunk and back seat of a Toyota.
One of the things I liked about living in Colorado was that two-thirds of the people there had, at some point in their lives, looked around and said, "This ain't working," then tossed it all in the trunk, threw away what wouldn't fit, and split.
As a result, when a problem arose out there, one of the options was "Throw it out and start over," which is not always the answer but should always be on the table.
By contrast, when I moved back East again, I found that a majority of people around that table were determined to solve the problem with the fewest changes possible. They were not constitutionally able to break it down to its basic elements, to consider that the solution might mean scrapping it entirely.
They were holding on to their Nehru jackets, because you never know.
I'm certainly guilty of accumulation. I went out to Colorado at 20, with everything I owned in the back of my car, which was promptly stolen, leaving me wondrously unburdened.
But I moved back East at 37 in a 26-foot U-Haul.
Once the kids were gone, I started trying to simplify, but it's not easy.
I'm now in a small apartment with boxes under the bed, boxes stacked in the corner, boxes filling the closet and boxes stacked in a storage area behind the kitchen.
It all fits in a much smaller truck, but it's still too much.
It doesn't have to fit in the trunk of the car, but it needs to fit, and it doesn't.
By the way, I did have a Nehru jacket. Actually, my little brother had a "Nehru jacket." What I had was a three-quarter length Indian-cut raw silk jacket with a dozen small rosewood buttons up the front.
It was more costume-freak than fashion. While all the guys in "Nehru jackets" looked like they were about to appear in the party sequence of Laugh-in, I looked like I was about to go to a meeting with Muhammed Jinnah and hammer out the proposed borders of India and Pakistan.
That is, it made me look more like Nehru than Alan Sues, which was a distinction I was willing to live with.
That beautiful coat was in the car when it was stolen, which is okay because it certainly wouldn't fit today.
What I wish hadn't been in the car is the picture of me in it, at the Washington High Junior Prom in South Bend, with Linda Lapkeiwicz.
I don't need the picture to remember that night, or that coat, and I certainly don't need it to remember Linda, who is one of my favorite ex-GFs.
But there will come a time when my kids are going through all my crap, and that picture would have really made them stop and say, "What the hell is this?"
I'd certainly hate to get things pared down to where that question doesn't come up several times.
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