An Empty Storage Unit and a Bizarre Bazaar
'A MATTER OF LAUGH OR DEATH' -- This guy's on the verge of NOT needing a storage unit anymore. WOW!
My wife and I are on the verge of doing something unprecedented. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but we are very close to completely emptying our storage unit, which will allow me to cancel that relentless monthly charge on my credit card.
After perusing records dating back to the mid-1700s, I discovered that no storage unit in the continental United States has ever been emptied and the monthly fee canceled — except when someone died. In those cases, everything contained in the storage unit was transferred to a dumpster by the dearly departed’s grumbling adult children. While cleaning out the storage unit, those adult children repeatedly exclaimed, “I can’t believe Dad kept all this junk. Why did he pay good money every month to hang on to this STUFF?!” (I am, of course, using a more family-friendly synonym for the word “stuff.” The adult children, huffing and puffing and sweating while digging through boxes and bins to make sure nothing valuable was hidden among the junk, always employed more salty language as they dragged those boxes and bins to the dumpster.)
Anyway, when my wife and I sold our home four years ago and downsized to a condo, we made dozens of trips to Goodwill. In addition, we filled two large dumpsters. This reduced the size of our possessions to a much more manageable level. After moving and filling the condo with as many items as it could hold, we only needed to rent one large storage unit for the excess, which at the time I considered a moral victory, since I was pretty sure we would need to rent at least two large storage units, or maybe lease a warehouse similar in size to an Amazon distribution center. It was a given, at least in my mind, that we would pay each month for that storage unit for the rest of our lives — and maybe longer depending on when our daughters, immersed in the confusing probate process, finally figured out why my credit card was being posthumously whacked every month for $135.
Well, it turns out I was too pessimistic. My wife, always the optimist, had a plan to slowly but surely clean out the storage unit and stop paying for it. It took almost four years, but now we are on the verge of a miracle. The storage unit is almost empty. There are only two major types of items left there: enough Christmas decorations to trick out Radio City Music Hall for the entire month of December, and my collection of DVD movies. I’m not sure how I was able to afford such a collection over a three-decade period, since I’m pretty sure I didn’t shop-lift any of them. But I currently possess literally hundreds and hundreds of DVD movies. They take up three large plastic bins and two milk crates. I really didn’t want to throw them away, but I stream everything nowadays and I don’t even own a functioning DVD player anymore.
Then, just the other day, I saw a notice in our church bulletin. The parish is having a Christmas bazaar later this month, and they’re looking for donated items. The list of items needed includes jewelry, books, jigsaw puzzles, china, ceramics, toys, and … holiday decorations and DVDs!
“This is great!” I yelled to my wife. She whispered in reply, “Shhhhh. You’re not supposed to read the bulletin during Mass!”
Well, I’m going to rent a van and bring all those DVDs and most of the Christmas decorations directly from the storage unit to the church. I hope the little old ladies who usually attend these bazaars are big fans of James Bond, Clint Eastwood, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
(The column “A Matter of Laugh or Death” appears each week in the Republican-American newspaper, Waterbury, CT.)
Feel free to click the ‘Like’ button below. That’s the only way I know if people are reading these essays. (Of course, if you read them but don’t like them, then, uh, I'm not sure what to tell you, except ‘Thanks,’ I guess.)