Wonder Boy and I have been cleaning out our attic. We both sort of hoard thing. I don’t mean in that “I need to be on an intervention television show and there are ten dead cats living in my house but I don’t even know it” sort of way. It’s just that we both have things that we Love. I Love chairs and screen-printed posters. Wonder Boy Loves instruments, especially ones that sound funny.
As time goes on, and we accumulate many a new thing, up to the attic it goes. We always assume that someday the perfect place will present itself for whatever the item it is. It rarely does.
We talk and talk about how we really need to curb the behavior and we never do. The fact is, we invest very little money in the things we squire and we like the hunt for junk and so it goes on. After our recent stint in Costa Rica I think we both became acutely aware, or at least I did, that if we were ever to relocate to someplace awesome, we would need to pare down the things.
For the past several nights we have been up in our attic. Hours go buy as we root through boxes, sorting things into garage sale piles, trash heaps and recycle bins. As is to be expected, there have been some dynamite finds.
Just tonight I found a Christmas card sent to me from one of the train engineers from when I worked at a local amusement park. Based on the average age of the engineers back then, I assume he is long since passed, but seeing that card with the old man handwriting scrawled along the bottom made me smile. I loved the group of retired men who spent their summers teaching little kids around the city to love trains.
Also related to my time at the amusement park was a guide written by two girls I worked with preparing me for the transition from an all-girls high school to a co-ed college. The advice… was ridiculous but funny to read through again.
Wonder Boy’s finds were a little more… prolific. I feel some can’t be shared without his explicit permission, but he found his Alf hand puppet, which is pretty awesome, AND he found his prom tux.
