From time to time, "we" 'clean house' and find the black trash bags. It is no surprise to me, of course for and earlier me have done to work of carefully tied packaging closed, and cacheing treasures up in the attic; from time to time, I am instructed to 'get rid of that clutter' as the now grown kids 'will never use those again' I am slow to act on this injunction
The Brio trains, the metal Erector set, the cast lead soldiers and molds, the Duplo blocks, the stuffed animals, Lincoln logs, the McGuffey readers, the arrow and ax heads collected in the fields, have all fallen to head of the queue for disposition over time. Stuffed animals were in the dock this past weekend. At that point, I usually nod silently, carefully re-tie the sack, and set it to one side for a moment. Then my new task is to find a new hiding place for the bag in question after her attention turns to other matters
But a grandchild's mother and the child were delighted with the animal figures from my preservation efforts, even if the spouse was not as well pleased to see 'those old things' again
A few weeks ago, the Brio train set that was set aside in a cardboard box, up in the dark to rest almost two decades ago came out. It moved in with a grandson infatuated with rolling stock and was 'new' again; The Erector set, the melting pot and molds, all gone (not to return with current day safety rules — choking hazard of the nuts and bolts, heavy metal fumes). I am on the lookout for a replacement McGuffey reader set (that friend of books that taught me to read upstairs in a quiet room as the adults 'talked' downstairs), so I can 'seed' a room for young visitors
The flints and shaped stones? I was not attuned to their disposition occurring; a 'sharpie' sweet-talked a sale for a pittance from a elderly family member when 'cleaning up' prior to closing down a house before sale. That lot of childhood treasures also carried out the door the minnie balls I dug from the earth at Gettysburg
Entropy won a round that time; I know we'll battle again.
[An earlier version of this appeared at Victor Niederhoffer's Daily Speculations, which aggregator I recommend]
