Junk ... or memories?

Did a couple more boxes today (and exercised -- should probably get started on the holiday shopping list).  

I had a bit of a brainstorm on the books this morning -- right around when I struck a couple books from Hebrew School.  Because, I mean, I can't throw them out -- there's probably some sort of religious prohibition against it -- but I have no need for them to take up space, either.  So, while I put out one box to be filled with "junk," I put out another box for "book junk" and a third for "electronic junk."  They'll all go away by some combination of junk hauler, donation, e-waste recycling, and/or yard sale.  So, I unpacked with a new enthusiastic spirit today -- saving the few items I actually want, and more or less "sorting" all the rest.

And the question isn't so much why I brought this stuff over from the condo (rather than throwing it out over there) but how it ended up at my condo to begin with.  I found my old 64-color box of crayons (with the built-in sharpener in the back).  I bought the condo in '95.  I haven't used crayons since ... what? the '70s?  Yet the crayolas found their way into storage in my condo -- coming out to surprise me now in my new home.  I'm forty-freakin'-two; I think it's time to let the crayons go.

I then found my old "School Memories" book, which my mom filled with all sorts of info through my Elementary School years.  It was in a ziplock with various other goodies, like the little door-knocker that had been on my bedroom door when I was growing up.  I put it next to my Baby book with the vague goal of finding a place for both of them later.

And then I found the horseshoe with my name on it.  I'm pretty sure it was on my wall growing up.  In Maryland.  I moved to California when I was 8.  How the hell did that horseshoe end up with me now?


(It was a tough call whether to keep or toss the horseshoe.  The deciding factor was that my name was written on it in such a way that you'd have to hang the horseshoe like an upside-down "U" to read it.  But everybody knows that if you hang it that way, all the luck will run out.  So, I figured that the luck must be long-since expended by now, and tossed it.)


I did keep, though, a series of four cassette tapes.  I can't tell you exactly when they date back to, but I'm going to guess college.  I used to send cassettes back and forth with a good friend when we were at school in different cities.  (By the time I was in Law School, I think we'd upgraded to computer disks.)  I couldn't throw the tapes out.  I just saw her the other day -- she and her husband came out for her annual Thanksgiving visit.  One of these days, we'll have to sit down and listen to them.  There should probably be wine involved.  


But I did throw a lot more out.  Including two old cell phones.  (And when you read that, realize that I kept two more old cell phones, so I've been hanging on to these for a very long time.)  I threw out an old answering machine, a few old landlines, an old handheld, and an old ... well, I think it was trying to pass for a laptop at the time.  Some math books.  Some law books.  


I just gave up on tonight's unpacking because I found the Ziplock full of movie ticket stubs.  I'd been collecting ticket stubs since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  I apparently stopped at X-Men: The Last Stand.  That's upwards of 20 years of movie ticket stubs.  There was a time when I could look at a ticket stub and remember where I saw the movie and who I saw it with.  They were little memory triggers.  And now, my thought is just, "Really?  I saw X-Men: The Last Stand?"  I've got a similar box of theatre ticket stubs -- although it's even harder for them to trigger memories, as the stubs back in the early '80s didn't list the show titles.  So, now I've got to figure out what I saw in row CC in 1986.  (I do, actually.  But that one was special.)  But I stopped collecting theatre ticket stubs when I became a critic (and started collecting press kits instead -- I've got filing cabinets for them).  So, do I toss the old tickets?  Do I throw out my proof that I saw Springsteen in '85?  Or do I find a place for the Ziplock of ticket stubs?


The decision was apparently too much for me to make.  I'm postponing it until tomorrow.