KEEPING STUFF By: Yigal Rifkind Recently, I was asked to house sit. Well, that’s a lie. I was asked to house sit six months ago and the couple who “recently” asked me to house sit just came back from Florida; as such they needed their house back. I was reluctant to comply but since I couldn’t claim that theirs was an “unlawful occupation” under international law or even that I had rights via the doctrine of adverse possession, it was time for me to go. As I left, I was shocked at the amount of sheer “stuff” that I had accumulated in my short stay there. Perhaps it was sheer astonishment at the volume of it all or even the notion that one day it may be useful again that prevented me from throwing it out. Perhaps, but most probably it was my sheer laziness. It is never one magazine or one book or one binder, but slowly, slowly it accumulates until it is an enormous mass of “things”. Following is a list of things that I did not have prior to six months ago and for some reason I will pack and store somewhere in my house. 1. About a thousand two hundred pages of notes (the majority are from my Real Estate Transactions course, taught by Professor Rosenblatt and of those, the majority are not mine but rather summaries from students who have taken the course in the past). 2. Four course kits (weighing a total of thirty pounds) 3. Various photographs that (as of yet have not been put into any sort of album) 4. Gum, packages of Halls (from a sore throat two months ago, and I should mention, that I dislike Halls with an intensity and will never suck the things again (unless I get another sore throat) ) 5. Irish Spring soap (my devotion to Irish Spring soap is almost obsessive – and as such, I condemn my previous brand Ivory to the eighth ring of hell – Begone Ivory! I say) 6. Six issues of Maxim magazine – which for some reason I am reticent about throwing out – even though I have read them four times (although, I nonetheless laugh each time). 7. Two videotapes – K-Pax and Casino with Al Pacino and Robert Deniro. Casino is two videotapes so technically I have three videotapes… blasted technicalities! 8. Books – mostly from Indigo – and too numerous to mention (I thought briefly, of mentioning the titles – which are interesting – but alas, alack, I decided against it). Now that’s about it, which, combined with new clothes, hygienic products (i.e. soap shampoo, and toothpaste) makes an absolute crap load of stuff. This gives one pause to wonder exactly why I have this stuff in the first place. Now Maxim makes for good second time reading but as for school notes – there is little chance that I will ever look at them again. The videotapes aren’t even mine and yet, they now just sit in my room waiting for their owners to remember their disappearance and retrieve them. I buy books on a consistent basis but once I read them there seems little utility in keeping them around. As for the course kits, “Feh!” I say. And yet, there it lays, an enormous amount of useful things that will have little practical application as long as I continue to hold them. Who reads books twice? Certainly not me. And who will ever use my notes? Most probably not me. It just that they are my possessions that in some small way signify my existence in this universe. They signify my accomplishments; I read those books, I wrote those notes. I have done things. And yet, there they lay, taking up space… just taunting me. Blasted “stuff”… I wish I wasn’t so lazy!