Garage Sale

I need to have a garage sale. I desperately need to have a garage sale. Somewhere along the line I was designated the keeper of things in our family. Probably because I am the only one who is not a pack rat and I have the room. I don’t anymore.

Sure I have hung onto my roller skates and my vinyl records even though I don’t have a turntable anymore but other than photographs I don’t keep stuff. We go through our drawers, the kids drawers, and donate anything that doesn’t fit to Goodwill. Okay, I have a pair of clam diggers from 1981, and they don’t fit, but they are cute and I keep thinking one day I will be able to fit into them again.

My father was the king of all pack rats. And having one barometer/pen holder wasn’t enough, he had to have three. If one of anything was good having many many more was much better. My father lived in a big house however and had the room to store all his crap. I don’t but somehow all this shit ended up in my garage.

I have photographs. Boxes and boxes of photographs. I have the old metal plates used for photographs. Slides, gobs of negatives, you name it. I have been trying to go through them for the last few evenings. I have decided that if I can identify the people in the pictures I will keep them. If there is simply a family resemblance they get tossed. No on in my family has ever bothered to take a pen to the back of a photograph and jot down who is in the picture, where it might have been taken and what decade or even century it was snapped. So unless the people who resemble me are standing with Abe Lincoln or building the Chrysler building I’m pitching them.

I have architectural plans from houses we lived in in the 60’s and seventies, I have more diplomas than I know what to do with. I can’t throw those away I realize but I don’t have a clue what to do with them except box them up and let my kids deal with them. I have explained to my son that when he gets any of the crap that I feel too guilty about throwing away that he must not succumb to the guilt. Right here and right now he is allowed to throw anything away that he ends up with. Unless of course it his or his sisters hospital wrist bands, he must keep those.

While I was going through these boxes I came across cards I had made for my mom and dad as a child. Surprisingly my penmanship was pretty good. I couldn’t spell worth a damn but my handwriting was legible. Now it’s the other way around. I can spell but I can’t even read my own handwriting. I’m saving those too.

I found a picture of my brother and me hugging each other. I’m keeping that one just to prove that we once liked each other. Because it is his fault that all this crap is in my garage.