THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510040043
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HE SAID, SHE SAID
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY & DAVE ADDIS
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
KERRY SAYS:
I caught Steve sheepishly slinking around the other day with a cardboard tube under his arm.
``What's in there?'' I asked suspiciously.
``A picture from my class reunion,'' he replied, clutching the tube defensively.
I groaned.
What to do with a panoramic color portrait of Steve's 20th class reunion? A picture populated by balding, paunchy men (Steve excepted) and women wearing way too much makeup.
Throw the darn thing away, you say.
Perish the thought.
It's now part of Steve's stuff and will undoubtedly migrate to the attic soon to join the rest of his stuff.
Marry a man, you marry his stuff.
And, boy, do we have stuff.
I'm thinking about charging admission over Halloween for tours of our attic. It's really scary. Towering, unstable boxes of stuff, piles of stuff, furniture covered with sheets with stuff piled on top.
Let's take a peek into some of Steve's stuff, shall we?
Over here we have several cartons full of Boy Scout stuff: badges, mess kits, canteens and pocket knives. Over there are dozens of cartons of Steve's college notes - of course those English Composition 101 notes could come in real handy some time. What's this, a varsity letter jacket with aging, cracked leather? We can't even count the envelopes filled with yellowed photographs of people neither of us know. Then there are Steve's college ski posters secured with rotting elastic bands; the edges of the posters are ripped from thumbtacks and yellowed scotch tape. Look, over here we have Christmas corner. These are all the tacky gifts that have come his way from well-meaning relatives - there are at least five ``humorous'' lawyer cartoons, framed in plastic, boxes of cheap pen-and-pencil sets, and sweaters in peculiar styles and unusual colors.
I've begged Steve to unload some of this stuff. I've appealed to his social conscience about how poor people might enjoy some of it. To no avail.
And the scary thought is that the stuff will keep multiplying till it's piled to the rafters.
Where is my stuff, you ask? I don't have any. Most went long ago to the Salvation Army or Purple Heart. And, yes, I do have a couple of yearbooks at my parents' house.
Dave, do you care to enlighten us women about why guys have to carry around a tractor-trailer's worth of their glory days wherever they go through life?
DAVE SAYS:
You're absolutely right, Kerry. There are legions of poor people who would give their last rotting crust of bread for the chance to line the walls of their hovels with Steve's college ski posters.
And I'm sure their wretched days would be made brighter if you gave them his Boy Scout badges. Mix 'em! Match 'em! Trade 'em with your friends!
Face it, Kerry: Nobody wants most of the ``stuff'' you're moaning about because it has meaning to only one person on earth: The guy who collected it.
If it makes him happy, let him keep it. All of it.
Yours is an old argument and it lacks balance. We accept as perfectly normal that women will keep mementoes through their lives: A dried flower from a prom date, a letter sweater, a pair of yellowed tickets from a film that seemed to mean so much at the time.
But let a guy keep a few things from his youth and the inclination is to make fun of him for trying to relive his ``glory days'' - whatever those are.
It's a cliche that TV sitcoms use when they're hard-up for a laugh: Male character tries to wriggle into high-school football jersey. He's too fat. TV wife and TV audience get big yuks at his expense. Ha-ha-ha.
Reality, thankfully, is a little more complex than a TV cliche. Those relics in the attic usually mean a lot more than a rekindled moment of glory on some ancient football field. Think about those Boy Scout patches and college-dorm posters. They come from a time when Steve knew who his friends were and what he was about. The further we get into adulthood, the less certain we are of those certainties.
I'm not the pack rat your husband is, but the few things I've hung on to mean a lot. They remind me of times and places when the work I was doing was valued, of colleagues and competitors who played the game with their cards on the table, of times when all the dice came up 7s and everything seemed possible.
The point of having mementoes isn't in reliving past glories, Kerry. It's in knowing that good moments can happen in your life, and that you can connect with them again whenever you feel the need.
So leave the attic alone, Kerry. Cut a boat loose from its anchor and there's no telling when it will hit a reef. by CNB