Sunday, January 09, 2005

Blame Pixar

It was another productive weekend waging the battle of Good God Almighty, Where Did All This Crap Come From? I'm pleased to report that Saturday witnessed another carload of memories making their way to the local Goodwill Organization. I waved goodbye to clothing, puzzles and toys.



One important public service announcement: I learned that my local Goodwill Organization will not take Lite-Bright toys. They employed some sort of magical Lite-Bright radar and discovered it among 12 bags of memories. "No Lite-Brights," the man gruffed. I was so flabbergasted, I just said OK and tossed it back in the trunk. I checked online later to see if perhaps they were made of asbestos or shards of glass. Even my boyfriend had no idea.



One of the most difficult tosses of the weekend was going through two huge containers of FRIENDS. Now, lest you think I'm some Jeffrey Dahmer in training, friends are TinyTuna's stuffed animal menagerie. Friends take up a lot of room. And if you think SOCKS hold a lot of memories, Friends are The Holy Grail of memories, even if they've been living in a subterranean Rubbermaid Shantytown for the past two years.



But with TinyTuna gone for the afternoon, I was determined to take advantage of the opportunity.



My first sorting of the FRIENDS had me going through and pulling things that had little emotional attachment. These included troll dolls (they had somehow infilatrated the stuffed friends and had to go), McDonalds toys (ditto) and other trivialities. If it didn't have a name, it was going. After one pass through both bins I was dismayed to see how little I had tossed. I had to go back in.



And then, it got hard.



All I could think as I looked at the faces of these innocent beings was the movie Toy Story, and how all the toys were so afraid of being tossed in the trash and unloved. Thanks to Pixar, I got a major case of the guilts.



I had to make the Solomon-like decision of who got to stay and who had to go. As I picked through the friends I had to wonder, were Littlefoot and Cera more deserving than Clifford the Big Red Dog and Curious George? What about The Big Comfy Couch Dust Bunnies, Fuzzy and Wuzzy? And then was the Unholy army of Beanie Babies. What to do?



As I picked up each one, they stared back at me with adorable fuzzy faces and big expressive eyes. This was going to be tough.



In the end, I did what had to be done*



Another weekend down. Another battle won.





*Toss, Toss, Toss, Keep, Toss and Toss, and TOSS. However, out of a mixture of respect and fear, I kept a small plastic Woody doll as a sort of voodoo protection idol from vengeful toys.

2 comments:

Mrs. Wonderful said...

Brave woman. I sorted through and managed to put 30 or so "friends" into a Hefty sack which now lives in my room. Is this better than Rubbermaid Shantytown? No, but Wonder Boy does not care.

Eventually, I'll be able to part with the friends who "need to go make other children who have no friends" happy.

(The local thrift store/children's shelter says that they never need friends. They always have way more than they need or can sell. They need diapers and nebulizers.)

Sarah said...

Your courage shines a beacon for us all. If you have a little closet space, may I rent it from you?