A Life Now Ordinary

Was going through some bins of stuff I'd put in storage about ten years ago and I was amazed at some of the stuff that I still have around for some reason. I have to assume that much of this crap was meaningful enough to me at the time to want to hang onto it, but for the life of me it seems like much of it could belong to somebody else. These days I'm a chubby stay-at-home dad after losing my job a while back. Fifteen years ago, though, it's amazing to realize just how different my life was and I marvel at how I made it to this point given all the crap that I used to get into.

Among the stuff I found:

• Road and topo maps of Israel and the Sinai
• Calling cards from at least 5 different countries
• A ticket stub from a sex show in Amsterdam instructing me that photography is prohibited
• Pictures of an ex-wife and several ex-girlfriends (those will finding their way into the shredder)
• A ten-sided die
• A check book in which the last check was written in 1995
• A 20 Kopek coin from the USSR
• A car key to a car I can't remember
• An old Bloom County comic strip
• Receipts from trains, planes, ships and taxis
• An old work badge from a museum I worked for 20 years ago
• A pen made of bamboo, given to me by a guy from Nepal whose name I can't remember
• A button with the album cover of The Police's Synchronicity album
• Two replacement bulbs for Christmas lights
• Stacks of 35 mm negatives of pics I took at car shows and of me playing ice hockey
• A stack of lotus flower stickers
• A casette tape of the Chinese edition of Def Leppard's Greatest Hits
• A Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club membership card
• The necklace I wore while working as a raft guide
• If you're still reading you are eligible for a special prize
• An international power converter
• Two athletic cups (size XL, obviously)
• My old selective service card
• My Miskatonic University Alumni Association card and library stack pass
• A Timex Data-Link watch, battery dead

Anyway, the point of all this is that if I were to die and have that stuff be found, people would have a very, very different idea about who I am/was. I don't really think of myself as that guy anymore. I'm the guy who takes his kids to storytime at the library on Tuesdays and pre-school on Thursdays. I'm the guy who sneaks down the basement when he can to watch football on the big TV and play Xbox. I'm the guy who made hot chocolate for his 1st-grade daughter and her cheerleader colleagues because they had to cheer in 24-degree weather yesterday.

I'm going to go through a lot of this stuff and get rid of it, I think. These days we need to make room for bins of clothes, toys and winter boots. Maybe I'll have a little eulogy for my old stuff. I don't mean to obliterate the memory of who I was, but I think it's more important to focus on who I am and who I have to be down the road at this point.