In anticipation of my impending nomadic existence, I have been trying to downsize my belongings. I cleaned the closet out the other day because half of the stuff in there I would never wear ago. I became aware of the clothes I needed to get rid of when I removed the suit bag for the first time in months and noticed them. I really do not need the Gumby button-down shirt since I have not worn it since high school and have not been aware of its existence since, well, high school. The Stanford jacket I wore through most of my high school years was also back there. It will stay in the closet in case I want to wear it one day, though I probably won't. It's NorCal, and it clashes with my SoCal Angels caps.
The Gumby shirt will be donated to Craig, but for whatever reason he declined the cape. What the hell is that? I mean, it's Craig. Who would have guessed that Craig would turn down a free cape? It's Craig and a free cape! Maybe if the cape was attached to Mardi Gras beads. If only. Now it's being donated to Goodwill.
Another discovery was that in the drawer I keep my financial records were, well, my financial records. These financial records were interesting because I had not realized I had seven years of records in there. Bank statements, pay stubs, bills. I shredded all but those relevant for the current tax season, but not before looking through them.
It was quite the trip down memory lane. I got to look back and see every place I had spent money in the last seven years. Some of it was kind of sweet. I got to see how much money I spent on different dates I had been on. "Let's see, I spent forty bucks on her, but I spent seventy on her, and maybe I would have spent more on this other one if she would have shown that the investment would have been worthwhile."
Some of it was not very sweet at all. Some of it is actually kind of awful. Like around my 21st birthday when my statements were drowned in bar tabs. Then there was the unproductive week of nothing just before graduation when I blew through a few hundred dollars drinking because there was nothing else to do. And that other charge, where the date lined up with my friend's bachelor party, but it listed only "ATM Withdrawal" and no location. Oh, and worst of all, Mikey's birthday trip to Atlantic City, or as I like to call it, the night somebody stole the birthday present for Mikey, and then had the present punch me in the face several times.
Man, Memory Lane is a fun street, isn't it? The weirdest thing I found, though, was a folded scrap of paper. I opened it, curious as to what it could be. It wasn't related to finances at all. I have no idea why it was even in the finance drawer, but there it was. I opened it, and this is what it said:
"I can't go a day in this place without getting sick. Just look around the room: coughing, sneezing, Jewish. This place is a germ bomb." - Barringer
My favorite high school teacher said something funny in class. I wrote it down so I would remember it for later. Didn't expect to save it until 2011, though.
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