Uncle Bob's

I must be getting old.
In fact, I know I’m getting old.
We’re all getting old – or at least older, and there’s nothing we can do about it – except give in.
I’m giving in, and the evidence of that is in the stuff I am willing to give out – or give away.
I’m letting the stuff go.
A sure sign of advanced years, I think, is the ability to let go of stuff – all kinds of stuff.
When you’re young, you like stuff, but you’re too busy testing out your own stuff (strutting your stuff) to worry about acquiring other stuff. Consequently, though you’re pretty fussy about the stuff you have – or want, relatively speaking you don’t have much stuff at all.
I used to drag around a trunk full of LPs (large pizza-size black platters on which music had been recorded – for those of you under 40), along with a suitcase with two pairs of jeans and 40 tee shirts, and I thought I was weighed down by my possessions. I had no clue how much stuff I would eventually be able to carry around on my back - like the giant tortoise primitive people believed carried the world on its shell.
The truth is, or was – that, 30 years ago I hardly had any stuff at all.
So where did it all come from?
When you reach a certain age, you don’t suddenly have a lot of stuff: stuff doesn’t start erupting from the floor like zits on your forehead.
It’s not that you have more zits as you get older, it’s that you have more forehead: more space for the stuff.
You get your first car and, you soon discover, a car is just space to put stuff.
You get your first apartment and – though you were hoping it would prove a ‘babe’ magnet, it turns out that it’s a stuff magnet.
Your first house? Oh my gosh, a house is like some Criss Angel ‘Mind-Freak’ magic trick in which – one moment you have all these empty rooms, shiny wooden floors, clean carpets and unblemished walls, and then Criss throws a blanket over it – tosses his carefully jelled unkempt hair back and – voila, the place is full of stuff: crammed with stuff; stuffed with stuff; choking on stuff.
Of course you could just get rid of the stuff, couldn’t you?
Hah, that’s a laugh. I still have that trunk full of LPs.
Have you ever seen Criss Angel’s basement? It’s crammed with old guillotines, elephants he teleported, lots and lots of mirrors, and case after case of hair gel.
Scientists will tell you that human beings are genetically linked to squirrels: no matter how many nuts we have, we’re going to keep cramming them down the trunk of our tree until it splits in half. Heck, I carry around a year’s worth of acorns in my mouth.
So what do you do?
Well, when you’re young, you think it’s simple: just get more space, for the stuff.
Maybe you start off storing stuff in the basement. Then you buy some of those closet organizers. Closet organizers are like accountants on a battlefield: useless, except to keep count of the carnage.
Did you ever go to a house and – seeing how neat and uncluttered it was, wonder where they were hiding all their stuff?
My friend Dan super-glued some of his stuff to the ceiling.
I have another friend who put those torpedo-shaped containers that you usually see on the roofs of SUVs – on the roof of his house: he keeps his LPs in them.
I myself have 3 ½ tool sheds, spread about the back yard – and my tools are still somewhere in the basement.
So I was somewhat taken aback, when my wife announced last week that there was going to be a new addition to our family. She wasn’t pregnant – she was just trying to tell me in the nicest way possible that she had agreed to take a few pieces of furniture from her father’s old apartment. It was her way of saying, you can either help me move his stuff in, or you can move yourself out.
I took it surprisingly well, I think. I do take up a lot of space that could otherwise be taken up by three boxes of old photographs, or an old KayPro computer, or one of those budget size 48-roll bundles of paper towels that you can get at Sam’s Club.
That’s another thing about all this stuff: we have so much of it that we spend half our lives moving it from one room to another, one house to another. Forget weddings and funerals: the only time the family ever gets together is when somebody is moving in or moving out. I found out my son had become a Zoroastrian during a conversation we had from opposite ends of a couch we were carrying up two flights of stairs to his new apartment…
So, anyway, I gave in, and paid a visit to Uncle Bob.
Did I tell you about Uncle Bob? He’s not really my Uncle, but I was attracted to the name, and there was a local franchise right down the street from our stuff, I mean, from our house.
Uncle Bob’s is what they call, a self-storage center.
Uncle Bob’s was a revelation, to me at least.
I’ve heard of doggie heaven, and cat heaven, and the like – the places that our pets go after they die. But I never knew there was a stuff heaven. That’s what Uncle Bob’s is: acres and acres of cute little metal houses where the stuff you never thought you could live without, spends its golden years.
Oh, so you’re not impressed. That’s because you’re still young. You still think that there will always be space for your stuff, right at home. You swear you will never give your stuff away or – heaven forbid, store it someplace.
Maybe you’re right. Or maybe you’re just young.
As you get older you don’t love your stuff any less, you just start to realize that not too far down the road, somebody’s going to have to figure out what to do with your stuff.
I’m not waiting. I’m taking a sofa bed and my old trunk of LPs, and moving into a 5x10 at Uncle Bob’s.
Forget the stuff. I need a place of my own.