Look I know it’s Thanksgiving but sometimes you just gotta say what’s on your mind. Dont you just hate it when people know you’re a hoarder and you try like hell to keep it on the “down low” but it still manages to reveal itself in all it’s ugly full-monty obsessive-compulsive glory anyways? A little like Ralph Fiennes the lunatic serial killer in the movie Red Dragon who cant help but show his total cray-cray to the trash tabloid writer played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Do you see? Do You See??” .
Here’s the thing: I have like 43 pairs of cheap flip-flips from over the years but there are really only about 20 or so that are actual matched sets. I keep hoping the twenty plus missing foam rubber slippers will wander in on their own someday, dirty and disheveled like a gritty survivor from “How I Survived” or Elizabeth Smart after living 9 months with some hairy middle-aged child molester in his gross perv bunker. I realize thats a rather odd metaphor for a missing shoe but let’s quickly move on… At least 8-10 of the remaining singles in my closet are either worn down to the approximate thinness of a cheap slice of Kraft American cheese or have broken toe-straps that are glued back on with shoe goop and plastic ties from Home Depot. Don’t judge me…yet.
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Today I decided to boldly go where I have never really gone before. I decided to PURPOSELY throw out a single sandal that was one of my favorites. I thought perhaps it wanted to be tossed out or more accurately “let go” since I sensed it felt that life was not worth living without its “sole mate”. Side note to Editor: Sorry Leslie but Im using quotation marks there because that’s some clever wordplay right there and people nowadays are, well, slow-witted due to trickle down stupidity syndrome (TDSS). Anyways I did it (the dirty deed) and I did it with Blackbeard pirate like panache. I told people who know me and my “quirkiness” (code for insanity) I was going to do it and I even took a dramatic selfie by the garbage can outside. This was a one-and-done deal you should know because I forget to take my trash up to the street quite often. That means the stuff in the big green rolling plastic waste containers outside are basically nuclear sludge and even the fruit flies and maggots die within milli-seconds once in contact with the decrepit contents. I know….super ewww. So after throwing away my favorite orphan sandal I took a victory lap up the street of the subdivision and around the neighborhood cul de sac. I know that sounds overdramatic but if you’ve watched Hoarders or Hoarders Buried Alive you would know throwing away anything from inside ones hoarder house (including dead squirrels, dog poop and 12 year-old moldy Oreos) is near to impossible. That’s because there are zero executive decision-making grey matter or frontal lobes left in the demented hoarder person’s head. Collecting too much crap has rotted our neural networks and fried our brain circuitry like my mother’s butter and schmaltz sautéed matzo brei. Sorting our socks or cleaning out a refrigerator is like asking us to do quantum physics. The other dirty secret of hoarding is that we often form unusual personal relationships with our possessions. It’s kind of like having imaginary friends in childhood that you talk to except in this case you are conversing with your 45 year-old Frye hiking boots from Boulder Colorado that still fit and remind you of a thousand sweet memories from the past.
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So here comes the good part. After Captain Cliff strolled up the street and back like Julius Caesar returning victorious from Gaul and then proudly entering Imperial Rome by chariot to the cheers of thousands… I decided to double down and go through a pile of old clothes that has sat on the floor of my master closet for about 8 months. Hint: When a hoarder says “8 months” that really probably means closer to 8 years but he avoids overt derision and humiliation by dividing everything by 10. Wait, is that math correct? See I told you our brain is mush. Whatever. The point is I was on a self-confidence roll and actually thought I would be able to give up clothes in my “skinny” pile, my “semi-skinny” pile and especially in my “I cant believe I was ever THAT fat” pile. Well guess what? As I shifted the pile and started the Keep versus Throw game, ie. “Throw, Keep, Throw, Keep, Keep, Keep, Go eat sandwich, Give Up, etc.”, I spotted something near the bottom that looked suspiciously familiar. It was the errant single flip flop, the prodigal heel and nowhere-to-be-found footwear returned. It looked at me like Harry the Dirty Dog before getting his final suds-filled bath and whimpered innocently, “Hi, where’s my twin brother? I miss him so much.” I could have plotzed.
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Look I realize I’ve drawn out this stupid story to a ridiculous degree and most people are more interested in finding a place to throw up after eating too much Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing or are driving the deserted streets of some nameless metropolitan suburb looking for an open store to buy a roll of Tums and half gallon of Pepto Bismol…. but i had to tell someone what a worthless piece of hoarder’s dog doo-doo I am. That’s right. I literally went out to the garbage can barefoot (I suppose subconsciously as penance for my sin) and tried to see if I saw the flip flop that I had so callously abandoned and naively thrown out with the biohazardous trash. Of course one quick look and the slightest whiff of the garbage du jour was enough to send me back inside reeling and wretching uncontrollably. Basically I lied and told the other sandal that he was toast and that his partner had disappeared and was never ever coming back. Then when his grieving insole was looking the other way I put him out of his misery as well. Maybe this is what they call aversive conditioning in behavioral psychology. I just know I aint putting up with that much shit from a cheap ass piece of footwear. Plus, it’s almost time for Black Friday and there’s a thousand more things that I really dont need on sale.
captaincliff 