Those Little Things
I actually don't mind packing so much. Sure, I'm a little idiosyncratic, and sometimes fretful, about the way I like some things, and completely apathetic about others, but I don't let it detract from my joy too unnecessarily.
Today I picked up some (for me anyway) important packing supplies, most significant being a box of the tiny recloseable plastic baggies which I've only seen other people use by filling them with what seems to always be exactly 20 Froot Loops and giving them to their toddler to snack on in the car. The box says "Resealable Snack Bags" but I think they should just give up, call a spade a spade, and label them "20 Froot Loop Pouches for Toddlers." Or possibly "Apple Jack Ration Bags" for those kids who can't handle so much color.
For me, however, they're "Those Little Things Packing Bags," which ultimately end up in the legendary Box of Little Things — one box, not necessarily very big, which gets setup about 25% of the way into any packing endeavor and whose sole function is to serve as a home for the myriad reasonably important yet not part of a set items which seem to plague my life.
You have no idea how happy this activity makes me.
Going through remnants of previous Boxes of Little Things awakens all kinds of buried memories — the discovery of items I'd forgotten I had, or which I had wondered about but not seen in a long time.
On the other side of the spectrum, often some of the new things which wind up in the Box of Little Things have been sitting in a bathroom drawer, on top of the TV, or on the edge of a shelf for months, if not years, a ready destination or container for them never being apparent. During a move, however, at least for that few week period of packing, moving, and unpacking, they have a happy little home in the Box of Little Things, and they bug me no longer.
Highlights of the box this year include the following:
My "gold" medal won at the 500cc indoor go-cart racetrack in Montreal. There were about 40 of us competing. I am a hero. The custom vampire fangs I wore at Halloween several years back. I don't know if they still fit. They were kind of dusty so I didn't try them on. The assorted foreign and noteworthy domestic coins I've collected in change or while traveling over the course of my life. A silver ring with an onyx inlay that I used to wear in high school. It barely even fits on my pinky finger now. The pieces of iron ore I collected at Canyon de Chelly. I didn't keep the sheep turd I picked up having mistaken it for a piece of iron ore. The gold watch given to me by my grandmother. She and my grandfather had several of them, these being about the only valuables which were spared in an armed robbery that had occurred when they first moved to Lubbock from Texarkana. The watch's crystal is broken, and the second hand missing. I intend to get it repaired and restored one day. A collection of Putt Putt arcade tokens from 1981, when my dad and I used to occasionally go play Pac-Man and Missile Command after our Monday night Indian Guides meetings. This is still one of my most cherished memories. The assortment of plastic pieces which I believe I wrote about on the website not long ago, comprising a wheel fragment from my childhood bed (broken off during a game of Superman where I'd hold my blanket around my neck like a cape, and bellyflop from my dresser onto my bed six feet away), a road segment connector from my childhood highways and skyscrapers building set, and an axle washer from an Erector set. The original DAT master of my CD from college. My spare car key. This one worries me, because I'm not sure if this is where I'll remember to look for it, but I can't think of a more appropriate place. Two collar buttons from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A bag of house keys which has followed me, steadily growing, for at least four moves now. I have no idea what most of them are for anymore individually, but collectively I'm pretty sure they include a key to Deandra's old apartment, a couple of mailbox keys I forgot to return, a key I found in the storage building next to my dad's restaurant and which I assumed was for the door to said building but wasn't. A spare set of dress shoelaces. A Tux the Linux penguin button. I don't personally care about it, but I keep thinking that it would be a prized possession to some Linux junkie out there. A really pretty agate rock which I'd given to Jennifer Jones. She returned it to me when we broke up, and I haven't had the nerve to throw it away, even though I keep telling myself I should because no one else wants it, and it's too heavy to keep moving around indefinitely. One of Ivan's laser pointers — the one which needs new batteries but will shine just long enough to get him excited, but not enough for any actual laser dot chasing.
Now you see what I mean. The Putt Putt tokens alone were worth the price of admission when I looked at the date on them and remembered why I'd kept them.
Today I picked up some (for me anyway) important packing supplies, most significant being a box of the tiny recloseable plastic baggies which I've only seen other people use by filling them with what seems to always be exactly 20 Froot Loops and giving them to their toddler to snack on in the car. The box says "Resealable Snack Bags" but I think they should just give up, call a spade a spade, and label them "20 Froot Loop Pouches for Toddlers." Or possibly "Apple Jack Ration Bags" for those kids who can't handle so much color.
For me, however, they're "Those Little Things Packing Bags," which ultimately end up in the legendary Box of Little Things — one box, not necessarily very big, which gets setup about 25% of the way into any packing endeavor and whose sole function is to serve as a home for the myriad reasonably important yet not part of a set items which seem to plague my life.
You have no idea how happy this activity makes me.
Going through remnants of previous Boxes of Little Things awakens all kinds of buried memories — the discovery of items I'd forgotten I had, or which I had wondered about but not seen in a long time.
On the other side of the spectrum, often some of the new things which wind up in the Box of Little Things have been sitting in a bathroom drawer, on top of the TV, or on the edge of a shelf for months, if not years, a ready destination or container for them never being apparent. During a move, however, at least for that few week period of packing, moving, and unpacking, they have a happy little home in the Box of Little Things, and they bug me no longer.
Highlights of the box this year include the following:
Now you see what I mean. The Putt Putt tokens alone were worth the price of admission when I looked at the date on them and remembered why I'd kept them.