It’s that time of year again. That strange, oddly fun yet ephemeral moment in time once every rotation of our globe. I ascend to my bedroom. The shelves and bookcases are neatly kept and newly dusted, my desk is clean, and nothing is astray on my carpet. But the relative cleanliness of my room is a shield to the horrid disorganization of my drawers and everything in them. Then, in a mixed mood: half “let’s get this over with”, and half “what the bloody hell am I going to find?” - both rather valid thoughts - I violently fling my drawers open, and spill the contents onto the once bare carpet.


Hundreds of little things have made their way in there over the 365 days of madness. Empty tic-tac cases, burned out ear buds, dead pens, eraserless pencils, blank postcards from this vacation or the other, batteries (dead or alive, who knows), empty tubes of paint, buttons, coins, birthday cards, used gift cards, receipts, paper clips, magnets, beads, undone worksheets, and balloons are among the mess. “The Pile of Death” as I have affectionately come to call it, covers a wide area of my floor and an even wider area of my conscience as I regard the zoo of random objects.


As I look them over, memories arise: notes from a year of high school evoke easier times. Bio homeworks, completely blank, bring back memories of friends far away. Stubs of suppressed tickets remind me of my first Metallica concert months back. A gift receipt from Macy’s reminds me of how much I wasted on a lost love. And it’s the memories like this that force me to empty my drawers and give up these memories. I’ll have to wait another year and see how much a box of crap can remind me of myself.