Sometimes, when I flick through the cable TV channels, I pass through programs with titles like “Pawn Stars,” and “Storage Wars.” I always wonder the same thing:
“Honey, you don’t suppose that could be my stuff they’re selling?”
“Of course not! Why do you ask?”
“Well, ever since you said you put that bill on auto-pay, I’ve never been back there. Have you heard from them lately? Are they even still in business?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course that isn’t your stuff. But wait a minute – you really haven’t been back since we put it all there?”
“Why would I? I’m a busy woman, you know.”
“It’s just that you swore to me that everything in that unit was essential. You went on and on about how you needed it, just not on a daily basis… and that was the only reason we couldn’t get rid of it entirely. Remember?”
I didn’t have as keen a memory of this scene as my husband seemed to, but this was not the time for confession. “Oh, absolutely,” I said. “I meant every word. But in the meantime – is it being paid on a credit card? One that’s still working? Because – does that storage unit on TV look the teensiest bit familiar?”
“No way! Look, there’s a palm tree behind the building! That’s nowhere near here.”
“Sweetie, it’s not a tree, it’s a telephone pole. I’m starting to worry.”
“This is ridiculous. Why would anybody want that stuff of yours, anyway? You told me it was all just sentimental value when I was hauling the boxes in for you.”
“”That’s right – as far as you know. What do you care, anyway?”
“Well, if there’s anything valuable, I’d like to sell it before our debt-collectors can.”
Just then, there was a commotion on the screen. The metal storage door rolled up, and the nondescript crowd of loiterers on television crowded around the entrance.
“Will you look at that?” said one.
“That’s just amazing!” said a third.
“What? What?” said my husband.
The screen cut to a commercial.
While we watched an endless stream of commercials for home insurance, car insurance, medical insurance, and scooters, my husband conducted a sort of third-degree. “Um, Judy, there’s no way, is there, that your stuff could have included my old baseball card collection?”
“No, you said your mother threw it out.”
“And to the best of your knowledge, did we ever have any model trains?”
“A train set? No, I’d remember that. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” he said. But he seemed to heave a sigh of relief as the program resumed.
On TV, there was now a bidding war over the mystery storage unit.
“Who watches this kind of program, anyway?” asked my husband.
“Nobody sensible,” I answered. “Could you turn up the volume? I can’t tell what they’ve found.”
What they had found was a beaten-up old footlocker. The footlocker looked eerily familiar to me. “I can’t watch!” I exclaimed. “I couldn’t bear it if it’s mine. You look, and tell me what you see. Then I’ll tell you if that’s my stuff or not.”
“How will you know?”
“I’ll know.”
“Okay, it’s a ‘70s-era Mexican wedding dress, some vinyl records, and some posters for a rock concert…at Woodstock! I can’t imagine what it’s worth.”
“Phew, it’s not my footlocker!”
“Why, what’s in your footlocker, Judy?”
“Just some old college papers,” I tell my spouse. He doesn’t need to know that there are also two street signs that friends and I “liberated” from campus, one drunken night.
“Just some old papers? And I had to pay for that? It was heavy enough, I was hoping there were at least a few gold bricks!”
On the TV, we were now being treated to an intensely boring scene of the storage unit’s new owners, rummaging through boxes and complaining about the contents. Tupperware from the 70’s, apparently.
“I can’t believe they made a show about this,” my husband grumbles.
“And I can’t believe we watched it,” I said. “All right, I surrender. As soon as both boys are home, I’m going to make them get everything out of the storage unit….”
“…And open it up? And put it in the trash?” There was a gleam in my husband’s eye.
“Not so fast! I’ll have to go through it all first. There’s only one place it will fit – and that’s in your half of the garage!”
“Of course. Me and my big mouth,” he says.
