Junk

I no longer have to schedule my day around workouts—Now I can go for a walk with a piece of pork in my mouth and not worry about GI distress as opposed to worrying if that Cliff bar was really worth it and would it be the demise of my session. So today I busied myself with getting rid of some of the crap in my parents’ house. Unlike my apartment in NY where there is no extra room for stuff we don’t use, there is ample space where my parents live. And were it not for the space, I’d have to wonder if they were hoarders. I’ve found phone books that were 5 years old! I asked my mother, “Is there any reason you have 10 phone books?” With a straight face, she asked, “Why, do you want one? That way you wont have to keep asking me for numbers.”

I continued to fill garbage bags but got frustrated when my mother said, “I’ll have to go through that,” and when my dad gave me a firm, “Don’t form the fool.” This clean-up has elevated my disdain for tchotchkes.

Jorge (It's George, but I call him Jorge. He chooses his days when he responds.) and Sheila haven’t gone through the bags yet, and I am sure they will undermine my efforts. A couple things I chose to throw away were two wooden trophies that my sister won in badminton in 1978. It then made me wonder when I would toss my own awards. Isn’t junk dependent on perspective? Presumably, my trophies are there to remind me of the effort, sacrifice, and reward. But I have my memories. I have my journals in case I forget. What am I holding on to? Will my child repeat this cycle of tossing my possessions and wondering why I am holding on to such junk? I am so curious how this will play out when I return home this week and make the decision to keep or toss.

At what point do you get rid of hardware?

* The trophy above belongs to my teammate Shane Neil who is a 2x winner and defending champion of the Regis and Kelly high heel-a-thon. Clearly you don't toss a beauty like that (Shane or the trophy!)