Hording Things

Samuel inherited Jennifer's brown eyes, her aversion to risk, and her penchant for hording things.

Jennifer dutifully keeps cancelled checks, receipts, plastic bags, instruction manuals for small appliances, 0% credit card offers, kid cups from Pizzeria Uno, and every holiday and greeting card ever received.

I'm the opposite extreme. I throw away direct-deposit pay stubs as soon as I get them. Ditto for the 10-page Amex bill, as soon as it's paid. I never read instruction manuals, much less keep them. If I lose a button on a shirt, I'm likely to throw away the shirt.

Today I was looking for--dare I admit--old checkbook records, and, naturally, the two months I was missing were the only ones since 1967 that I couldn't find. (I know, I probably threw them out, but I like to think they're just buried somewhere under all the other crap.)

Samuel was watching me go through desk drawers throwing all the junk I was finding into a pile on the floor to be thrown away. He kept stopping me and saying, "I want to keep that."

I said, "You want to keep this scrap of paper from two years ago with some hand-written jibberish on it?"

He said, "Yes, it's a secret code."

I said, "What does it say?"

He said, "I don't remember. But I want to keep it in case I remember."

Sigh.