Welcome to Forgotonia

My parents bought me a Kindle for Christmas.

And, ingrate that I am, I’m going to publicly list everything I don’t like about it.

I feel the need to do this, you see, because I once hated the idea of the iPod, (which I now can’t live without).

I’m aware that I’m on the brink of abandoning something I care about deeply (the book, the printed word, the future of human civilization, blah blah blah). So,

I Knock Before I Try, Because:

1. The damn things necessitate accessorizing. I dread this scenario (which I’m sure will happen in the not-too-distant future): Person 1: “What color Skin did you purchase for your Kindle?” Person 2: “I got a pink polka-dotted one to match the pink supply of Air that I purchased to breathe for this month.”It’s like taking the last decent, non-materialistic part of our culture and turning it into one more consumer experience. This is just simply wrong. (Never mind that a certain person  may or may not have added a bright pink, lighted cover to her Amazon Wish List today).
   
2. Books were the last things that encouraged patience, sitting still, focusing on one thing at a time. Now you can buy another book when you’re supposed to be reading the one in your hands. Soon we’ll see the new Amazon “Order with One Blink” option. (Amazon Prime will provide a free tube of Latisse.)
3. Libraries, which you could say are central to democracy, are already struggling. So, you’re already down, eh? Well here’s a big swift kick in the arse!
4. The way people defend the necessity of the Kindle’s existence by saying “It’s so much more convenient.” Really? Holding a small paperback in your hands was seriously “inconvenient”? I will allow this line if you are, say, Susan Orlean, or the President, and are therefore traveling constantly and reading and researching a lot. (That’s the kind of President I hope for, anyway). But otherwise, the number of books you’re reading simply cannot be breaking your back. My great-grandmother probably hauled water for the wash–which she conducted with a washboard–from the well to the farmhouse and back again. My ancestors’ ghosts laugh at your definition of inconvenience. (Take that, Jeff Bezos.)
5. Magazines don’t mind if you drop food on them. (I read at the table when I’m eating lunch. A lot.) Kindles probably cannot tolerate such abuse. (Wimps.)
6. The fact that I know I’m going to be an underdog here. Just like all those poor fools who are trying to save the U.S. Post Office from going under. (If only the U.S.P.O. had invented Blink Mail or colored Air.)

Left: books I received for Christmas. In this corner (right) the opponent awaits.

A note about this post: despite what you might begin picturing, I am not, as of this writing, wearing Birkenstocks, eating out of a bag of homemade soy-granola, or stinking up the local library because of my refusal to wear chemical-laden anti-perspirant.

You may, however, go ahead and call me a tree-hugger. (Or if you can come up with something catchy and alliterative for “obsessive recycler who freaks out if she sees nary a Post-it going into the trash,” let me know.)

Chapter 1: Footprints in the (Toxic, e-Polluted) Sand

If you’ve stopped by here recently, you now know that I have some difficulty letting go of sentimental things.

But now I must admit that it’s not just mementos I find hard to throw away.

I feel incredibly guilty any time I know I’m throwing away something that will end up in a landfill.

And that’s on a regular day. The moving process only increases this anxiety.

Dragging old mattresses and box springs to the curb, (as I did on moving day), makes me not only worry about the environmental footprint I’m leaving, but also, about how many other people in the world are dragging their crap to the curb on a regular basis and don’t give a f#$%. (Like the neighbors in our apartment complex who left this the other morning. I had to fight the urge to chase after them and beat them with a bamboo-handled, made-from-repurposed-dental-floss tennis racket. [Just kidding, they don't make those. ...do they?])

And it’s not just the broken futons I’ve deposited over the decades that make me feel bad. I hate throwing burned CDs in the trash. I’m not worried about whatever data might be on them, so much as how the physical thing is (not) going to break down.

And I need to know that when I do finally force myself to part with my good-attendance certificate from sixth grade, I can at least make “use” of my trash.

So as soon as I moved to Davenport to join my husband a month ago, I began gently but firmly insisting that we needed to start sorting out recyclables even though the apartment complex doesn’t have curbside pickup. Doing so, however, would create even more clutter in our apartment, (and perhaps it’s not a stretch to say my husband, C-NOR, is a bit of an anti-clutter fascist.)

But upon watching him throw a “perfectly good” milk jug into the “regular” trash, I shuddered, then walked over to the can and retrieved the offending numeral-one-in-a-triangle receptacle: “Nuh-uh. We are so not doing that.”

And that’s only a hint at my level of  obsession.

Chapter 2: Doing the Can-Can

For several months this past year,  when I would go out for a walk–especially in late spring after the college kids had vacated the rental premises near the campus–I’d take along a plastic bag and pick up bagfuls of empty beer cans so I could recycle them.

It felt like a sort of twisted, adults-only Easter egg hunt, like, I spy a Four Loko under that bush! And then I’d actually scurry over to get my hands on the giant thing before some other crazed recycling-addict could get their grubby paws on it. (Or more like get their paws grubby on it. But whatever.)

And you thought they'd been banned. How wrong you are.

True, this strange hobby sometimes earned me looks from people driving by. (Sometimes I worried about seeing myself in the police blotter:

“At 5 p.m. Monday, a resident reported seeing a woman in business-casual attire, in the front yard of  house at the corner of University Drive and Rental Apartment Row, allegedly in a scuffle with a transient over a tobacco-spit-containing can of Keystone.“

But I did gather, and recycle, hundreds of empty cans from those littered lawns.

So of course there was no way I could live in this new Dumpster-only apartment complex without coming up with some sort of solution.

Chapter 3: Fling, Flang, Flung

My first week here, (rather than sending out resumes to become more than marginally employed), I Googled and called around until finally figuring out how and where to take our recyclables.

Luckily, I discovered there is a drop-off facility just a few miles from where we live.

Along with the public library, this is the other hip local spot I've been frequenting.

But it’s still less than convenient to take the items to this place ourselves. And rather than store our rinsed-out refuse in a garage, (which we don’t have), we have to find an out-of-the-way place and organized way to let stuff accumulate until there’s enough of a pile to necessitate a trip to the facility.

At first I thought I had come up with a genius solution.

When we were planning our wedding and reception earlier this year, one of my goals was  to be as eco-friendly as possible. I found recyclable beer cups (did I mention our wedding reception, was, technically, a kegger? See profile pic at right), and I ordered some pop-up recycling containers called Flings, in which guests were asked to deposit the ceremony programs and, later, their empty cups.

The handy little pop-up receptacles were smaller than I had hoped, but they held up well and did the trick.

So I figured we could use one of these in the apartment for our junk paper.

But I had that thing stuffed in, like, an hour after moving in.

And then when I took it to the recycling facility, I had to upend it inside the mouth of the giant bin, which is protected by these rubber-curtain flappy things. In the process of trying to shake the stuff out of the container and into the bin, my genius solution collapsed in on itself and got caught in the rubber flaps.

Finally, I got so frustrated I just dumped the whole damn Fling in there and stomped away in a huff, startling the retired grandpa guy behind me with my foul mouth. (Sorry, sir.)

Finally, a few days later, I ordered a set of matching, wipe-able-out-able color-coded bags on Amazon.

So now we’re hiding them behind the kitchen table–until they fill up and it’s time to take them to the facility. (But only if it’s not rainy, cold, too dark out, too early, too late, or, is a Tuesday and I just don’t feel like it. You blame me? You take it there, then. Isn’t it your turn, anyway? Oh and the dishes too. Thanks!)

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been trying to get rid of stuff as the result of moving to a smaller space.

It’s taken a lot for me to get this point, but, I now want to keep things only if I can state a solid reason:

• “This inspires me.”
• “This reminds me (in a non-depressing way) of someone I will never see again.”
  and/or,
• “I’m actually, for certain, going to use this, and it will happen on [this specific date].”

But despite this new sense of empowerment, I’m still struggling with a philosophical problem. Let’s call it “The Aging Hipster Faces Her Existential Angst.”

Chapter 1: Shirting the Issue

During the move, I unearthed from the back of the closet a bunch of concert T-shirts from shows I saw in the late 90s and the early 00s.

There, in a giant plastic bag, was a whole folded-up past; 100%-cotton, size-XL proof of  once-passionate devotion (not to mention of disposable income) for bands like Wilco, Guided by Voices, and, yes, Dave Matthews Band.

And  in sticking with my pledge to pare down, I knew that if I was going to move them to the new apartment, I’d have to find space for them or actually do something with them.

At first I thought about looking into having one of those memory quilts made. (But something about cuddling up on the couch under an ugly album-cover image by a band I can no longer stand just doesn’t quite go with IKEA decor.)

And, thanks in part to certain reality-television stylists’ sage advice, gone are my days of wearing boxy cotton T-shirts that reach down to my knees, (i.e., a fashion line called “The Alison, 1990-2002″).

But I’ve been saving these shirts for a reason. And now, somewhat painfully, I have to admit what–who–it is.

Chapter 2: Sweater Song

When I was in middle school and heard “Light My Fire” for the first time–and learned that my uncle in Seattle, my mom’s hip brother who I idolized, had been a fan when he was in high school–I was mesmerized.

By seventh grade, I had developed a full-blown obsession with  late-60s and 70s pop counterculture. I’d ask my parents quizzically about why they hadn’t gone to Woodstock. How could they have lived through the Summer of Love without being blissed-out hippies or passionate protesters (rather than, say, a church-going prospective high school teacher and a Navy seaman)?

Still, in my late teens and all through college, when I would search rather desperately for jeans with a flared leg, my mom would lament, “Man, I wish I’d kept my bell-bottoms and disco shoes….Stuff always comes back in style.”

And all of this time, my uncle periodically shipped me cassettes and CDs of non-top 40 music, exposing me to Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Jimi Hendrix, on and on. Stuff that, not to be too dramatic about it, changed my life.

So I guess I’ve always expected that I, too, would someday be a passer-onner of the cool stuff from my own era.

I would never have to regret not having held on to such-and-such. Instead, I could say to the kid whose school was having “90s Grunge Day” for their week of “crazy” Homecoming days,

“Let me grab that hole-y green cardigan out of the attic, hon–you’ll have the best costume in the whole school!”

But as I’ve had to face plastic tubs of sentimental stuff I’ve kept from high school and college–I really do have an old-man sweater that I thought looked Kurt Cobain-ish when I bought it at the Salvation Army circa 1998–I’ve had to ask myself, “Whom, exactly, do I presume will be the recipient of all this ephemera?”

As every news outlet seems to announce on a monthly basis, women at my age are biologically supposed to be having kids by now (at least if they want to have a better chance at healthy ones).

And yet my husband and I–who’ve been married all of two months–happen to have other things on our immediate priority list than bringing a new life into the world (and hence changing both of our lives forever). Things like learning how to bridge our two single lives together. (Or at least finding a place for me to store my socks and underwear.)

Chapter 3: I’ve Finally Decided My Future Lies Beyond the Yellow-Pitted [war]‘drobe

I’ve come to realize that hanging on to stuff for the sake of my own nostalgia–or the sake of someone who might never exist–is actually causing me stress, rather than enjoyment.

The picnic basket I’ve had since seventh grade is stuffed with folded-notebook-paper notes my friends and I passed in junior high. I have all of them. No, really. ALL of them.

I still have every diary I’ve ever kept–and I started keeping a diary at, like, age 9.

Why–when I’d been alive all of a decade–did I feel a need, even back then, to document everything? Why this protective urge to be able to refer back to every lived moment?

It’s like whatever must possess people to carve proof of their existence into bathroom stalls and state-park trail signs: “I was here.”

And I guess I saved my Lollapalooza 1996 shirt because I wanted to prove to my future self what I was truly like at one time, not an edited, more flattering version of myself. (I thought I was so, so cool for getting to go that show–even though it was widely panned as “the year Lollapalooza sold out.”)

But I’ve got to free myself from this potential landslide caused by pieces of the past.

(And let’s say I do hang on to all this stuff for the sake of impressing my nephews? Ten years from now, if I relinquish my T-shirt from the 2001 Radiohead show, this is what I’ll hear: “That’s nice, Auntie, but…didn’t you ever go see Creed?”)

So, for now, (in a moment of strength), I’ve decided I’m going to get rid of as much of my memorabilia (or at least the wearable kind) as possible. Even if the only way I can get myself to do it is to stop to document it first, (as I’ve done below with a set of photos on Flickr).

(Now, don’t even ask me what the hell I’m gonna do with all those diaries.)

One of the surprises about being married, so far, has been the fact that I find myself playing more of my dad when it comes to little squabbles about money.

My dad, in my parents’ relationship, was the one who always questioned my mom before she threw anything out–or wanted to buy anything new.

As a kid I always took my mom’s side in these small arguments. (It was hard not to. When the console TV broke in this millennium, Dad wanted her to find another one just like it.)

My mom and I both love to shop. We’re both lured in by bargains and baubles and going to stores for the fun of it.

So when Chris and I have little disagreements about the need (or not) for certain things, I can’t believe how much I remind myself of my dad.

Now that I’ve left a rather comfortable full-time position with great benefits to become a part-part time teacher, I find myself worrying about finances and becoming the more miserly.

Last week when Chris ordered a pie pan and a butter cutter ( I love saying the name of that thing) in preparation for making a Thanksgiving pecan pie, I–instead of saying, “I can’t believe how lucky I am to have found a guy who bakes,”–actually said instead, “Did we really need that? Couldn’t you have just borrowed one of those from your parents (who are also big into baking)?”

When I moved in with my husband last month, I gave away a mattress and box springs from my parental home that was not only handed down to me, but that, when it was, it was already more than two decades old.  (Have I mentioned that my dad is a farmer?)

So, the idea of replacing the queen-sized bed that Chris already owns–a perfectly nice, perfectly balanced between fluffy yet firm, and even perfectly modern and luxurious (i.e., he actually sprang for the memory foam-y kind, whereas the bed I was using had a freaking piece of plywood underneath it to keep it firm)–with a bigger, king-sized one, seems ludicrous to me, nothing but pure waste, typical American excessive-ness.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this bed.

But, with both of us having lived single a long, long time before we moved in together, we’re both used to having more personal space in the bed. (And hogging the covers.)

But more importantly, Chris (unfortunately)  has a bad back, so he’s always in some measure of pain on a daily basis.  So a night spent sleeping uncomfortably means an even more messed-up back the next day. So, every now and then when he wakes up with especially bad back pain, he’ll say, “I need to look into getting a bigger bed.”

I do understand where he’s coming from. But the idea of upsizing still makes me cringe–like we’re those kind of people who, if uncomfortable when trying to squeeze into airplane seats, would more readily sue the airline for obesity discrimination than think of dropping a couple of pounds.

This morning, though, I think I might have been forced to changed my stance.

It was 3:45 a.m., (and I know that for certain because, believe me, I was wide awake after what happened).

I’d been dreaming a weird anxiety dream in which Chris and I were having (for some reason) our second of three consecutive wedding ceremonies, and I was (surprise!) worrying about why we had decided to do three separate ones, because isn’t that a tad excessive, and shouldn’t we maybe have just had one?

Well. In my dream, I’m walking down the aisle for the second time, regretting my choice of having (apparently) decided that we needed one wedding ceremony for some guests, and a second one for another, when suddenly I’m possessed by a piercing pain in my right arm.

I cried out for Chris, and then, simultaneously awoke to the realization that the pain was coming from Chris. I tried to shake out of his spoon-y embrace (sorry, TMI, but it’s important here). “What the–are you awake?!?–ow, stop it! Chris, wake up!”

“Wha–? Oh, oh my God, I’m so sorry!”

“What the hell are you doing?!?” I cried.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “I dreamt I was chasing someone because they stole your cell phone,” he said.

We both started cracking up.

“Jeezus!” I said, rubbing my arm. Were you trying to eat the guy?”

Now, in the daylight, I keep doubling over with laughter out of the blue, every time I think of it–we’re both laying there dead asleep and Chris suddenly takes a huge, deep CHOMP into my upper arm.

I was honestly surprised when I later checked in the mirror and there was (thankfully) no evidence of bruising or broken skin.

But you know how lots of times when you’re dreaming something, like that you’re reaching out to grab a rope, say, and you might actually–but barely–move your arm, and you wake yourself up because you’re lightly gripping the pillow or something?

I can see the possibility of dreaming that you’re biting into something (a cell-phone thief?) and then maybe lightly gumming something next to you, be it person or pillow. But damn. Chris was ready to tear some flesh.

This morning at breakfast, as we were both still laughing and he kept apologizing, I jokingly told him, “We’re gonna end up like that couple on ’20/20.’”

Because, (dork that I am), I totally remember this episode from years and years ago when a guy with a sleep disorder ruefully admitted on camera that he had tried to attack his wife in her sleep, even choking her.

“I drempt I was wrasslin’ a deer,” the poor guy said, wide-eyed.

“You better not try to wrassle me,” I warned.  (I haven’t yet let on that I’m now a bit more open to making a purchase that would allow for a bit more space between us in the marital bed.)

I suppose  now I can truly say that, while our married life appears to be going swimmingly for the most part, it’s also true that–sorry, can’t resist–love bites.