(Just in case I didn't make it clear at the beginning, this is from an old log I kept of things that I was guilty about. It was meant, among other things, to list things that I was throwing out that I felt guilty about not keeping. The idea was that memorializing them was giving them enough respect that I didn't need to actually keep them any more.)
It’s been awhile since I wrote here. I feel guilty about that, of course. I’m about to throw out some more stuff. One is something I’d kind of like to keep, but it’s torn. So I’ll just describe it. It’s a dozen or so cardboard strips held together with a metal gasket at the top. They can rotate around the gasket.
The front strip is thicker cardboard and printed with the Foremost logo. It used to be longest, as well as the thickest, but that part has ripped off. The thinner strips say things like SL 1 quart So-Lo extra and O 1 quart Orange Juice extra. It was a little ordering device from back when milk was delivered to the doorstep by milk men in milk trucks. You’d flip out your change in order and leave it in the mouth of one of the quart milk bottles that you had set out for return. There were also a couple of leave 2 strips and a No Service strip.
It’s a cute little device. If you gave it to someone under forty and asked them what it was, they would likely have no idea. But it’s torn. It’s going out. Soon it will only exist here and if this document is lost, it’s gone. I feel a little guilty for not taking good enough care of it. If it hadn't been torn, I could have sold it on ebay.
Also, I picked up a few bookends from Grandma L’s house after she died. They were plaster, bought from a hobby shop and meant to be painted to suit one’s preferences. She had painted two and left one or more undone. I say or more, because I vaguely remember breaking one at one point. But they’re heavy and hard to dust. I personally get along better with bookshelves and thin metal bookends. So they’re going. They’ve been in my closet for more than a year.
Another thing going is an old globe. Too many borders have moved for it to be useful. And, like encyclopedias, it’s been supplanted by the internet. A few years ago I threw out the World Book encyclopedias. That was painful. Mom and Dad bought those from Mrs. Kearney, my second and fourth grade teacher. That took a lot of thought and cash on their part.
They already had the Encyclopedia Americana. But it targeted an older audience. The World Books were to help us kids with school reports. And they did. Still, ditching them felt like facing down my parents with: "You thought you were making a big family investment but you were wrong." (In late 2011, I'm not feeling that so much. That's a good thing to have let go of.)
