Time to Go: specimen #1

When I was growing up, Pack Rat was the term people used to describe those of us who struggle with throwing things away. "Oh, yeah, Mrs. Noodlebaum is a Pack Rat," my dad might say with neither disdain nor admiration. It was just what some people were. Like being blond or tall. I'm an animal lover, so I liked this term. Pack rats are intriguing critters who build their houses from their collected debris and instead of holding it all together with nails, they use their own pee. Truly a model of sustainability, what with the recycling of found objects and repurposing of bodily waste. So being a Pack Rat seemed a fair thing to be, especially for me since I didn't grow up in abundance. What could be wrong with hanging on to a few old treasures?

The new word for our kind is, of course, hoarders. Hoarders are not cute little rodents that live in snuggly dens made of pee junk. No, something more pathological, more in need of treatment. I am fortunate in that, like all my neurotic tendencies, my hoarding is a mild condition, slight bibliomania with a good dose of waste-not-want-not sensibility. My dad always fixed things instead of throwing them away. We ate dinner off an old spool for giant electrical coils that he had refinished. We recycled everything, composted, patched our clothes. Without a steady income to rely on, we had to be thrifty, another nice word to describe people who reject the throw-away mindset of American society.

All good. Fix before you pitch. Makes sound ecological sense. So I'm a thrifty Pack Rat. I can hold my head high and walk with proud intention, until I trip over all the crap in my house. I've been trying to battle my clutter for years and have made little progress, other than to keep it in the corners, most of the time. Today I thought of something less military than battle. What if I photograph something I need to let go of and make a brief record of why I might have hung onto it for 5, 10, 20, 30, or 40 years. And then throw it away.

So here is my first specimen: stack of flash cards I made for my geology class in freshman year (1979). I had a big crush on my teacher and because he thought I was really interested in rocks, he encouraged me to major in geology. So I studied compulsively, creating this heap of flash cards in the process. This tale is a tragedy though, because when I handed in my final exam, a blue book full of geological genius, I overheard him make a reference about his wife. I looked at his fingers and sure enough he was wearing a gold band. (Gold, Au for aurum, meaning shining dawn in Latin, number 79 on the Periodic Table of Elements). I got an A+ and a harsh reminder of my nerdiness. At first I hung onto the cards because I might use them for another class. Then I graduated, taught high school for eight years, went back to college, graduated, moved away, went back to college, became a professor, got married and had my first child in 1997. I was glad I hung onto the cards, because I knew my child would eventually grow up, go to school and have geology lessons. Finally junior high rolled around and I pulled out the cards. When I found the card called U.S.S.R. Oil that explained that the Soviet Union was the largest oil-producing country in the world, I just set them on my dresser where they have been for about a year. Time to Go.

In the picture I chose to pull out the card for the Velocity of a Glacier, because it reflects the pace at which I let things go.

P.S. I did hang onto one card, the one on the Rock Cycle to give to my second child, because he has a vial full of dirt he wants to turn into a rock. "Just hang onto that vial for, oh, a million years," I said as I handed him the card.