Day 19: Bags

It turns out that you don't need to be old, wear monochromatic clothing, or even have a shopping cart to be a bag lady. All you need is to receive presents or buy a few things, and after a while, the bags begin to pile up: inside of closets, inside of umbrella stands, inside of empty ceramic pots...even inside of other bags.

The problem with bags is that they're so useful. Depending on their size and durability, they can hold a variety of items and serve multiple functions. They're not like scented candles or bookends. They are infinitely practical. Last week, for example, my class cut up plastic bags to build parachutes. While outside, some of the students ran around using their bags as kites, and others tied bags under their chins like bonnets (both were told to stop). I used a bag to hold the parachutes and another to hold trash. By the end of the day, we actually ran out of bags, and I wished that I had hoarded them better. (I know, a low point for me.)

But this bag of bags on the floor, this Russian doll of practicality, has sat in a side closet for ten months now, untouched, and so it seems that too many bags is possible, that bags are not infinitely useful if they are not used at all. That it's high time that the closets, and the umbrella stands, and the ceramic pots be emptied, and the bags be brought out to the light. They may not have limitless usefulness, but they just might be able to hold my next delivery to Goodwill.

Day 18: Candles

You know it's bad when you find a scented candle hidden among the flour, oil, and breadcrumbs in your pantry. Can you see it?


I don't think I agree with the long-held theory that children believe their teachers live at school. If their idea of me is anything like my idea of the dentist (and I like the dentist), then it's not so much that I live at school as that I do not exist outside of school. That is to say, the only place that I have ever seen my dentist is at his office. I have gone to the same dentist for at least twenty years, and I've never seen him in anything but scrubs. I know he has children, but I've never seen them or even seen pictures of them. I imagine he lives in a nice house. I imagine he has hobbies. But I don't actually know anything besides that he is a nice man, a dentist, and that he has a lot of fillings for someone who spends the day talking about how to keep your teeth healthy. Sure, you would think that the fact that I've usually got some tool stuck in my mouth would mean that the conversation would center more on him, but not so. To me, he is simply a dentist. End of matter, case closed.

Children must look at their teachers in much the same way. Sure, they know a little about me. They know my full name, they know my favorite color (green), they know that my age falls somewhere in the 20 to 40 year-old range (because that's as specific as I'll be). They know my favorite word is defenestration (the act of throwing someone or something out of a window), and that I know a little something about football. A few of them have seen a member of my family at one point; a few others have seen me around town. But pretty much everyone has family members, shops at a grocery store, and goes to Mardi Gras parades. Really, all they know about me comes from our interactions at school. I don't like whining or tattling. I don't give out candy, I can draw pretty good circles but not so straight lines, and I know a lot about math and science. There is usually at least one typo on every assessment I give, and I'm willing to hear them out as long as they're willing to respect my decisions. But none of that gives a clear picture of what I like to do. It's nothing like seeing me play kickball in gold tights, or run a meeting, or shoot the breeze with friends. It's nothing like seeing my messy room, or hearing me scream at a Saints game, or even reading this blog. It gives kids little idea of what a teacher is really like outside of school.

Then the end of the year rolls around, and it's present time. Despite the fact that they spend almost as much time with me each day as they spend awake at home, the kids are just as clueless as their parents when they choose teacher gifts. And what's the go-to gift for people you don't know? Candles. And not just any candles. Not the kind of candles you could decorate a table with or actually use on a birthday cake. No, scented candles. Like they assume that every teacher wants their (non-existent) kitchen to smell like green apples and pralines. As much as I don't, I hold on to them anyway. Sure, I've managed to re-gift a few along the way, generally to people whose extra-professional lives I find similarly mysterious, but mostly they find their way to a table, a stove top, a ledge, or a pantry (don't ask, because I don't know how it got there). I don't know who actually uses scented candles on a regular basis, but I hope they exist. I imagine they would be the same sort of people who buy cucumber melon body mist at Bath and Body Works and debate the merits of Linen Fresh versus Outdoor Fresh fabric softener. Like hunting dogs, they have extra powerful noses, and like carpentry shops, great fire insurance. Occasionally, I hope, they shop at Goodwill.

Day 17: Bookends

The summer after sixth grade, my parents drove me up to Natchitoches, Louisiana to drop me off at a one-week gifted camp. Natchitoches, also known as the City of Lights, is not known for much else. It has a small college called Northwestern State (not to be confused, mind you, with the Northwestern University) and Louisiana's School for Math, Science, and the Arts, a boarding school of sorts. Outside of their joint campus, but before you meet the seeming vastness of Walmarts and strip malls that overtake the town, there is a quaint little downtown area. There, in a small brick-front store, I found this set of matching Noah's Ark bookends. To be honest, I have a hard time remembering why I thought I needed to buy them in the first place, much less for the thirty dollars the price tag on the box states I spent on them (a lot when you're eleven and your only income source is washing dishes or sheets, or worse, venturing out into the shed at night to feed the dog, where you know you saw a rat run along one of the shelves). The bookends are cute, I suppose, but more the kind of thing a woman buys when she's pregnant with her first child, before she realizes that babies really only care about things they can eat or play with. It's harder still for me to understand why I held on to them for as long as I have. Sixth grade was a long time ago, and they have no particular sentimental attachment. The time I spent in Natchitoches that summer was fun, but I really only remember designing a basketball gym and a golf course. Oh, and that I was one of only two girls in the basketball group (please, did you really think I'd be part of the sorority that was the swimming pool group?) and that our golf course included little golfers with names like "Leopard Forest." Oh, and I remember listening to my roommate sing opera, which now seems like a weird thing for an eleven year old to do. I remember her being pretty well-endowed, too (to my non-existent chest), and that she would tie up a towel between the bed and desk to change behind. I think she was from Alexandria. I remember a boy asking me to dance with him the final night. He was really cute and nice and listened to the same kind of music I did. He tried to drag me out onto the dance floor, but I refused, instead clinging desperately to the chair I was sitting in. No lie, that chair made it halfway onto the dance floor before he gave up. And to top it all off, I woke up the next morning with a crick in my neck after head-banging with friends at said dance. Serves me right. Poor boy.

I guess there are a few memories hidden in these old bookends yet. May they grace the home of a new mother-to-be, or the room of some other strange pre-teen who has no idea how to relate to the male species or, for that matter, how to properly head-bang.

Day 16: Purses

Wallets and purses and handbags, oh my!

A few of these were used quite often back in the day, but most were gifts from people who didn't realize that I'm a one purse and one wallet kind of girl (even if it doesn't match what I'm wearing). So, it's time to admit that will never use these wallets, purses, and handbags again, if I ever used them in the first place, and add them to the outgoing pile.

Day 15: Graphing Calculator

Most people don't have two graphing calculators. In fact, I would venture to say that most people don't have even one.

I got my first graphing calculator my freshman year of high school. It was a hand-me-down from my older brother, who somehow managed to convince my mom that he needed a whole new calculator (a year later) and that I should be stuck with the old one. Not only is it demeaning to still have second-hand items forced on you past elementary school, but I found out later that the connection feature was broken. The metallic tip on the transfer cord had gotten stuck inside of the calculator sometime before it came to me. So not only was I stuck with a hand-me-down, I was stuck copying the quadratic formula program manually into my calculator instead of playing Tetris during study hall like everyone else.

Then, sometime during my senior year of high school, one cheap, red lollipop and I managed to screw it up worse. As I was leaning forward to type something into the calculator for homework one day, lollipop in mouth, gravity took hold and a nice stream of sucker-infused spit ran down right onto the keypad. I don't remember if anyone else saw it happen, but it was disgusting. Like, really gross. Worse, I was pretty sure I had just broken my calculator. Then again, that would mean I'd need a new one, right?

Wrong. Some hand-me-downs just won't die. They are the cockroaches in the world of sibling possessions. The calculator graphed and calculated just as well as before. All I got out of the lolli-spit incident was sticky keys and the occasional ant.

When I left for college, I tried to pawn off the calculator on my younger sister, pulling the same trick my brother had pulled on me four years prior. Only this time, it didn't work. She got a fancy new one, and I continued to be stuck with crap. Yet more proof that I would make a terrible lawyer.

Finally, a few years ago, I resorted to simply asking for a new graphing calculator for Christmas. I recognize that that is an incredibly nerdy thing to ask for, but you have to understand that I am incredibly nerdy person. Plus, it's easier to balance my checkbook when I can see everything I've typed in before I press enter. So when the time came, and I was handed a "number-related" present, I was a little more giddy than is appropriate for a non-math major. I pulled off the wrapping, ready to stare through hard plastic packaging at the subtle curves of my new, state of the art TI-83. But instead of plastic and shine, the calculator just lay there in a recycled shipping box. I turned it over in my hand, dingy gray, scuffed plastic and crevices filled with glue residue, to find someone else's initials scratched into the back. Usually, I try really hard to look excited about a present, even if I don't like it, but I couldn't. Fate (and ebay) had screwed me once again. I'm all about reduce, reuse, recycle, but that cycle has to start somewhere, and for once, I wanted it to start with me.

Now stuck with two crappy calculators, it seemed only logical to keep both of them and use them equally often. Clearly, though, that logic was faulty. It's like keeping two dead-beat boyfriends because they're equally dead-beat. I guess I could just get rid of both of them and buy a new one myself...but where's the fun in that?

Day 14: Microphone

Readers, meet my childhood doll, Mary. Mary, readers. No, I know what some of you may be thinking, but you've read the title of this post. You know it's not her. No, this is not Mary's final hurrah. Simply by virtue of having made it through my brother's toy-decapitation phase early in life (poor Barbie), she has earned total immunity from all future purgings. Instead, Mary is playing Vanna today. Sure, the dress is not so glamorous, perhaps, but you must admit her face has a certain Elizabeth Taylor quality to it (as does her slow aging).

Too soon for Elizabeth Taylor jokes? Probably.

In my last semester of graduate school (there were only two, but it makes me sound smarter when I say it that way), I bought a laptop. It was my second computer and a huge relief to have something portable to work on my thesis with. Before the laptop was the iMac. It was my first computer, and I loved it. To this day, it chugs away at snail's pace in my parent's entrance room, its once spacious 40 gig memory now burdened with my younger brother's countless video games and music. While quite the new thing in its day, one of the features it nonetheless lacked (in addition to a floppy disk drive) was a strong internal microphone. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but one of the projects in a college class I took was to create a digital story. Think, slide-show with voice over. So I decided to invest in something that could capture my voice at a higher quality. Unfortunately, this microphone did not do the trick. There were compatibility issues, or maybe just cheapness issues. Either way, I ended up recording the voice-over for "A Weekend Alone in Paris" on my iMac's wimpy microphone. The sound quality isn't great, but I often wonder if maybe my voice just sounds like that. To avoid any definite answer (I'm pretty sure I don't want to know), that digital story will just have to stay hidden in the folds of my overly-complex computer filing system for now. Perhaps for a later viewing. Perhaps for a later purging.
Since that project, the microphone has sat in a drawer, its existence justified by the thought that I'll be ready, should I ever need an external microphone. It didn't work the first time, though, so I'm not sure how I've managed to convince myself of its necessity for this many years. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I think this microphone might be proof that this label suits me a little too well.

Day 13: Floppy Disk Drive

And you thought the VHS tapes were old school...


This afternoon at lunch, a friend asked what I was giving up today. I honestly hadn't thought about it yet. Some days, I have a backlog of items ready for the purging. Other days, it's harder: what can I give away that's substantial without giving away something I really DO need? Some days, I consider giving everything away. But then I'd end up broke from buying it all back.

***

If you're wondering why I've kept an external floppy disk drive all these years, it's not because I have a secret fetish for items with contradictory names (seriously, floppy disks are not floppy). No, I kept it...just in case.

In addition to competitive natures, large heads, and the desire to be even vaguely related to someone famous (or infamous), a "just in case" attitude runs strong in the Olinde family. Case in point, a few years ago, one of my aunts was visiting my grandparents at the same time I was. I walked out with her at one point to get something from her car, and when she opened her trunk, I was in poor-packer's awe. The trunk was full to the gills with various outfits, boots, shirts... Anything she might need, she explained, for whatever situation came up. She was only there for the weekend, but she could've been there for months, if she needed to be.

What I choose to keep among my worldly possessions follows something along those lines. Pretty soon, I will probably get the courage to get rid of the German notes I've kept from high school (just in case I ever started learning German again) and the various necklaces and bracelets I've kept hidden in a drawer (for when I find something they go perfectly with). But these moments rarely come. In reality, German is probably tot to me, and those necklaces will never be my style, no matter how much love my grandmother spent on HSN buying them. Likewise, I don't expect there will be a day when I find that long lost copy of Oregon Trail from the 90s and think to myself, "Where is a floppy disk drive when you need one?" And if that day ever does come, well, it wouldn't do me any good anyway. I can't remember how to enter a command in MS-DOS to save my life. And I don't think my computer can either.