Let’s talk about
”
stuff.
”
On Saturday, I browsed at several neighborhood yard-sales near
my home in Morgan Hill. My original quest was for a Weber barbeque
grill from $5 to $20. That, I thought, was the material item I
needed to make my life complete for the moment.
Let’s talk about “stuff.”
On Saturday, I browsed at several neighborhood yard-sales near my home in Morgan Hill. My original quest was for a Weber barbeque grill from $5 to $20. That, I thought, was the material item I needed to make my life complete for the moment.
At the very first yard-sale, I found exactly the kind of grill I desired – almost brand new – at a mere $15. The money practically jumped out of my wallet and into the hands of the nice woman selling the grill. She had a cardboard box of books – 50 cents a piece. You know me. I couldn’t resist. I took home a Safeway bag of paperbacks including “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff in Love” – which, once upon a time, a former girlfriend strongly urged me to read.
An hour later, I drove down Hill Road to do some weekend chores. That’s when I saw the “GARAGE SALE” arrow signs beckoning me to bargains galore.
“No!” screamed the tiny angel on my right shoulder. “You’ve got enough stuff already.”
“Oh, come on, Marty,” urged the tiny devil on my left shoulder. “Just stop and browse a minute. You might find some good stuff.”
I can resist anything but temptation, as Oscar Wilde once said. So I made a sharp turn into Morgan Avenue and stopped at two side-by-side garage sales.
At the first, a nice woman with a Texan accent sold me a Proctor-Silex electric can opener for one buck. At the next-door sale, I saw a beige love-seat sofa with a cardboard sign on which someone had scribbled one of my most favorite four-letter words: “FREE.”
My heart went pitter-patter. I didn’t really need a love-seat sofa, but … hey, it was free! There were minor holes in it where a pet dog had gnawed, but it was still in fine shape.
On a “test drive,” I relaxed back on the sofa. Ahhhh! A guy couldn’t ask for a more comfortable place to plop down his butt. I heard the Siren song.
In a minute, the sofa sat on the bed of my pick-up – along with a wooden kitchen work-table for which I gave the nice yard-sale lady $20.
Back home, my neighbor John helped me drag the sofa upstairs and into a den corner next to the bookshelf. That afternoon found me luxuriating on the quite cozy, dog-eaten love-seat, reading “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff in Love” while afternoon breezes whipped up the trees outside.
Yard sales can be sinister. They can be diabolic. You tell yourself you just want to browse. Suddenly, you have a pick-up truck crammed with sofas, electric can-openers and other stuff to clutter your home.
The problem about stuff is, it keeps creeping into our lives. Stuff possesses you more than you possess it. You’re responsible for its protection. You have to take care of it, insure it, clean it, repair it.
You worry about its loss. And all too often – even if you purchased it with the most sincere expectations it’ll utterly transform your life – it winds up, unused, in some dusty corner of your attic.
As human beings we love stuff. We can’t get enough collecting stuff. Several years ago during the Beanie Baby craze, a friend named Carol became maniacally obsessed with collecting the wretched toys. “Why do you do it?” I asked her.
“It makes me feel good,” she said with a self-conscious shrug.
Somehow, Carol got some momentary high whenever she purchased one of those ugly little beanbag dolls.
I have a theory there’s a chemical (perhaps endorphin) released into our bloodstream whenever we make an impulse purchase. Carol was addicted to this chemically-induced rush. For Carol, Beanie Babies were cocaine.
Guys, of course, love to collect stuff just as much as the ladies. But women are honest about it. I know quite a few women who love to clump together in packs and spend an afternoon stalking the Gilroy Premium Outlets stores. They’ll browse from Casual Corner to Kenneth Cole to Coldwater Creek. They call it “recreational shopping.”
Personally, I’ve never felt compelled to ask one of my male buddies to go to Macy’s to satisfy any “recreational shopping” urge. (And they’d look at me suspiciously if I did.) We guys go for the more macho stuff. Home Depot.
Buying stuff, filling our lives with clutter, is a kind of hobby for many Americans – a pastime that created a current public debt of $7,375,299,845,541.56 (as of Sept. 9, 2004).
There’s a side of me envying the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes who lived from around 412 B.C. to 323 B.C. He emphasized simplicity. All the stuff he chose to own was a robe, a walking staff and a drinking cup.
When he once saw a young boy drinking from a creek with only his hands, Diogenes chucked the cup.
I just counted and my kitchen cabinets hold 24 large plastic cups (bought at the Dollar Tree Store) and seven coffee mugs (gifts from friends). I don’t have the gumption to toss out a single one of ’em.
Blame evolution for this human craze for accumulation. Our obsession with hunting and gathering stuff harkens back to when our female ancestors foraged the forests on quests for berries and nuts and the males stalked animals through brush. Survival was the name of their game.
Here in the 21st century, we walk into Macy’s or Home Depot and our genetic programming kicks into the ancient hunt-and-gather mode. We can’t resist accumulating stuff, stuff, and more stuff.
The high lasts only so long. The pleasure is temporary. As the endorphin rush fades away, we once again find ourselves compelled to go on the hunt to gather up even more stuff in our gluttony for goods.
