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There must be a pack rat gene
We're visiting my parents for the holidays. Today my mom presented me with a pile of stuff that either goes home with me or goes into the trash. It's mostly detritus from my adolescence, including the following:
- Various pieces of Renaissance faire costumery
- 100 copies of the indie rock zine a friend and I published in high school
- 300 copies of the flexi-disc we had pressed to accompany the fourteenth and final issue of that magazine
- Records -- yes, records -- by Bikini Kill, Depeche Mode, New Order, Dramarama, Yaz, Pat Benetar, Huggy Bear, Erasure, Madonna, Silly Wizard and the cast of Sesame Street
- "NO PARKING EXCEPT FOR ARIEL" sign (Dave does not think it would be funny if we posted this on our garage door)
- Books by Shel Silverstein, Roald Dahl, and Nick Cave; and Welcome to Twin Peaks: A Complete Guide to Who's Who and What's What
December 27, 2005 5:26 PM
i know this story only too well. my folks (once again) threatened to unload the boxes of my crap (favorite stuffed animals from childhood, reams of stationery from my pen pal days, records and god-knows-what-else) from the attic and make me take it home with me. clearly your mother was more effective than mine. :)
since we no longer have a turn table, can i bring my box of 45s (yes, records) over to your house to play? you'll be treated to such classics as toni basil, boston, total quelude & samantha fox.
Whenever I move, my record collection (over 1000 lps and over 300 7"ers) are the very first thing that I lovingly pack (turntable is the second thing). When we thought we'd have to evacuate for a wildfire the first thing I packed after the essentials was a few treasured, out of print records.
I don't like to think I'm a pack rat but the other day my husband pulled an unpacked box out of the garage (we moved into this house 7 years ago) that had some old school notes from college but also some papers/essays I'd written throughout my school career, including a paper on the history of the horse in America from when I was TEN. Needless to say, I pitched it all (well almost) without even bothering to read any of it. The rubber Underdog figure and Fred Flintstone toy from a box of Cocoa Pebbles from 33 years ago I kept.
Toni Basil! I had a 45 of hers that I won at a bar mitzvah, but I think it disappeared somewhere in the college era....
My mother has yet to ask me to move all my crap (except for when we cleared out the garage a year or two ago). Some day I will be forced to go through all of my notebooks from middle school, but until then, they'll stay in a basement in NJ.