Memory Box
Those things I never threw away, I should have thrown away, now I can’t throw them away.
By Jeff Cann
A souvenir glass from a Brickskeller beer tasting, German Doppelbocks, the same night America bombed Iraq. Operation Desert Storm, they called it, but I didn’t know this until the morning paper arrived. Still wet from my shower as I primped to head out for the night, I saw on TV that the attack had started. I called Joe. “Hey, are you still going?” The next morning at work, our receptionist almost shouted into the phone: “No mom, don’t cancel your dentist appointment. You can’t stop living your life.” War was new to us then.
A forgotten spring, oversized and painted black, rust shows through. Unique, therefore special. A remnant of a sleeper sofa? A murphy bed? A worthless treasure like my wooden dice from Williamsburg, my commemorative aluminum coins from the Munich Olympics, or my hacky sack from college. Those things I never threw away, I should have thrown away, now I can’t throw them away.
A pair of silent movies on eight-millimeter film — the Keystone Cops and Laurel and Hardy. I watched them with my dad’s dinosaur projector, already an antique when I was born. We watched family home movies as well, projected on the wall above the mantel, forwards and then backwards. Our day at Great…
