Give me my stuff back already
They say one man’s trash in another man’s treasure. But they never tell you about the part where the man who threw out his stuff like trash wants it back the second some other guy comes by and takes it. The saying should go, one man’s trash is the same man’s treasure. I can see this play out pretty much every day when my 3 year-old daughter picks up some discarded plastic piece of crap my 5 year-old son hasn’t looked at in months and my son immediately realizes that it’s the only toy in the world he wants to play with. They once fought over a dismembered Barbie doll leg they found at the beach. I kept it so that I can somehow use it to teach life lessons at some point in the future when I figure out how to parent. But mostly I wanted that Barbie leg more than they did.
If it’s not mine, sign me up. If it was mine, give it back. I want everything I ever gave away back and am definitely uninterested in everything I have.
You hear that, Mark Smith? Give me back my stuff already!
Mark and his lady wife, Larlene, are friends of mine that are possibly the most into the same brand of Barbie legs as I am. They, like me, are collectors of lovely trash and we have a very special kijiji bond. I never felt ashamed to share even the most hideous of my kijiji finds with them: vintage velvet chairs that remind me of prolapsed rectums, plastic space desks made for sad clowns with writer’s block, and so forth. Since they are actually much more reasonable than I am and are veritable mathlete-athletes that prefer to wake up early in the morn to take a bite out of life, their consumerism has largely remained in the visual realm whereas mine has taken on a solid demon’s form (and yes, this demon has a giant cock and bullhorns in case you were wondering). Actually, their consumerism does manifest itself in the form of very technical, high end sports gear custom made by Scandinavians for their dog, Mr. Sniffers. He likes to heli-ski and finds that textiles made of moth wing dust and kryptonite wick the moisture from his musky dog pelt in the most aerodynamic way. Nonetheless, my house is filled with junk and their doggo is looking like a sports model. Since I am what one might consider a both a tidy and generous hoarder, I have magnanimously offloaded some of my hoarding overflow onto them over time. And, like skillful wizards, they have taken my hoarding garbage and transformed it into magic design dust that they liberally sprinkled over their apartment. When I come over, that dust gets up my nose and makes me sneeze with envy and regret.
Please enjoy perusing through pictures of their apartment though. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be here in the corner, reminiscing about the furniture that slipped through my fingers. Here is a Tetris song of regret. It will make sense later. Or not.
