she's
actual
size

After my park shuttle was rained out today, I went over to my parents' house and spent three hours throwing some of my stuff away.

One of the closets in their house was packed full of my stuff. It was all crap that they had cleaned out of my old room before they handed it over to LilSis, and some of it was total junk. The problem was that some of it was stuff I wanted to keep. I needed to go through everything and decide what to keep and what to pitch.

I was ruthless. In the span of a few hours, I threw out all of my notes from the first few years of college, including old labs and handouts. I pitched fish food that was moldering. I threw away tiny little pieces of junk that I had accumulated over the years; dreidels, random bits of plastic, broken toys.

I packed five paper bags full of stuff for the church rummage sale. My old model rocket kits, rockets that were partially finished but whose directions were long missing. Old sheets covered in dancing polar bears. Nightgowns, bathrobes, and jeans that will never fit me again. A bank shaped like a white elephant. An empty, overly ornate picture frame.

I also kept lots of things, and carried them all back to my apartment. My train set, complete with the little Exxon signs that light up. My model rocket launcher kit. My stick horse. A cement door stop shaped like a polar bear. An East German officer's hat. A stack of notebooks that are filled with high school conversations.

After I separated everything, packed stuff away and sighed in relief, my dad said, "You know, you have stuff in the attic, too."

Groan. Another day, perhaps.