One little project. I'm working on a quick project in the house, and suddenly the whole house is a disaster.
I start looking for one item and I find twelve others that I didn't know I was even looking for. Then I ran across a box filled with items from my past. I could have pushed the box aside and told myself to stay focused. But I knew that if I forced myself to deal with these ghost that have been hiding under my bed, I could move on to the next part of my life more easily. So I dug.
At the time, I'm sure that there was reasons for all the stuff that I've saved. Sometimes I saved things because my mother told me that one day I would want them. Well Mom, I've been sorting through your stuff for 3-1/2 years now, thinking to my self the whole time, "Why would someone save this?" But since important things seem to be mixed in with garbage, the sorting continues. And so does the sorting of my own things.
In this box tonight, I ran across some old correspondences from a pen-pal that I had when I was 10 through 12 years old. I wish I could see what I wrote to this kid. Because the things that he wrote to me were so off the wall and so unrelated to my life. I really don't know how that whole thing went on for over two years. Long before the days of the internet, letters took a few days to send from place to place. Then there was usually response time and mailing back. And throw in the fact that my parents taught me the lesson of the dollar by making me buy my own stamps and I think I see how it lasted so long.
It was funny to read some of the letters that I received. He would write about his beer can collection or the fish that he caught in the river. He wrote of dirt bikes and dead bug collections too. None of these things has ever caught my interest. Ever. Then he ended most of the letters with, "I've run out of words". Children are funny and I'm sure that I was no exception to that rule. I know that there was a lot of stupid things that came out of my mouth as a child and even as an adult. As technology has brought us to blogging, Youtube, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest and a half dozen other social networks that I know very little about, I have to wonder how much we've learned. Or are we all just silly kids talking about our beer can collections.
I've run out of words.
2 comments:
I've earned my living being a silly kid talking about people's beer can collections. There used to be enough people out there who cared about other people and their beer can collections to keep newspapers selling. Maybe we should care enough today and the world might be a better place.
Keep telling us about your collections and we'll keep reading!
I call it sharing each other's lives.....this whole blogging thing. Sometimes we have something astounding to say, other times we talk about our' beer can' collection. Just like life.
It takes time to let go of our 'things'. We are just letting go of Ron's mother's things.....16 years later. You'l know when, Stew.
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