The Law of Stuff

It's not really a scientific law, I made it up, getting my inspiration from Boyle's Law. Like gasses, your stuff will expand to fill all available storage space. The only way to limit the amount of stuff you have is to limit the amount of storage space you have. If your garage is full, don't build another garage, not even a shed or a lean-to, because your stuff will soon fill that new space up, and you still won't be able to get your car into your garage.

My father was like that. After he died, my mom spent the last ten years of her life trying to get rid of all his stuff, and there was still lots of stuff left for my sister and me to get rid of after Mom died. My sister took care of most of it because she lived closer. She spent the better part of a year on it, and I still had to haul a couple truck loads home after Sue had disposed of all that she could. Among this stuff was all my report cards and course books from school, as well as all four yearbooks from Gage, the brick-a-brack from my ROTC uniform, and various other school stuff that I had totally forgotten about. I told Sue that I didn't want any of that crap, and she said that she didn't want any of hers either, but that it didn't seem right to throw it away because it must have meant something to Mom, seeing as she had saved it for all those years. So it came to pass that I built a set of shelves in the garage to hold several plastic storage bins full of school stuff, which are sealed with duct tape to keep out the dust. The bins only took up the bottom shelf, but the other shelves soon filled up in keeping with the Law of Stuff. I have not built any shelves since then, and we haven't accumulated any more stuff since 2003.

I only got sent once to Mr. Stevens (or was it Stephens?). I'm sure I told you about the one fight I got into at Gage. I got suspended for two days, but it was worth it because nobody ever bothered me again. There was one other time that I went in voluntarily to stand up for Nick Komarchuck who had been violently attacked in the cafeteria by one of the hoodlum element, but I'm sure I've also told you about that one. I did hang around outside the office for a year or two working for Mrs. Jordan, the career counselor, in lieu of study hall. There was a library table and chairs where several of us sat for 40 minutes a day in case Mrs. Jordan needed us for anything. Mostly what we did was tabulate data from aptitude tests. We would take all the scores and calculate the mean, midpoint, and median for each group. Then we would make a graph and sketch a curve, which was supposed to come out in the classic statistical bell shape. If it didn't, Mrs. Jordan would shake her head and say, "Isn't that a funny looking curve?" Mr. Stevens usually closed his office door when he was in there chewing somebody out, but he would occasionally forget that we were there and leave it partially open. The guy was like a machine, he had a pre-programmed response to any excuse a kid or parent would come up with. Looking back on it, that was probably the only way to handle a job like that effectively. If you tried to be reasonable, people would just take it as a sign of weakness.