When you’re growing up, adults keep a lot of things
from you in the hilarious belief that they’re protecting you.
When my aunt Soo-ling got divorced, my parents
insisted that Uncle Tom had been posted overseas. Imagine our shock when we
bumped into him, his new wife and new triplets the following Christmas.
And there was that time my four-year old brother
Jack was staying over at an older cousin’s house and accidentally walked in on
her and her husband in the middle of sex. After everyone had stopped screaming
very loudly, they told him that she had a cramped muscle and “Cousin Matt was
just helping me massage it, that’s all, you don’t need to tell your mother
about this, it’s really nothing, can I buy you a Transformer toy?”
To this day, Mary has never been able to look Jack
in the eye, which makes Chinese New Year reunion dinners a little awkward.
Another thing that adults never tell you about when
you’re growing up is just how much crap you’re going to accumulate.
“It’s just ridiculous,” Amanda said the other day
as she looked at the dining table covered from corner to corner with American
Vogue, Vogue Italia, Vogue Australia, Paris Vogue, UK Vogue, W, O, Martha
Stewart Living, Martha Stewart Weddings, and a whole bunch of titles I couldn’t
make out.
“How many dead trees is this?” Saffy asked, goggle
eyed, as she gingerly fingered through the pile. “Amanda, some of these are still
in their Kinokuniya plastic wrapping!”
“That’s just the last two months!” Amanda said
darkly. “I’ve got two years worth at the back of my closet, hidden beneath a
pile of clothes that I’ve never worn.”
As I stared at the bleak evidence of Amanda’s
obsession, I thought guiltily about the stacks of books on my shelves,
gathering dust and turning yellow with mould.
I have unread books that I bought when I was still
in high school. Some of the pages are crumbling from the humidity. But still I
keep them. And then I go out and buy some more. Which I proceed diligently not
to read. Even though I promise myself, one day, I’ll get around to reading all
three thick volumes of The Lord of the Rings, and the geo-political intrigues
of the Middle-East. I keep thinking this in spite of the fact that I can barely
get through a copy of 8DAYS.
Meanwhile, Saffy has left us with strict
instructions to shoot her if she ever comes home with one more set of
underwear.
“I don’t know why I have so many!” she moaned that
night as she sat on her bedroom floor surrounded by open drawers overflowing
with lacy thongs, bras in every colour and pattern, silky nightgowns and little
bits of g-strings. “I only ever wear the same two pairs of undies, but I must
have a hundred sets! This is why I must stop watching the Victoria’s Secret
Fashion Show! It’s pure evil!”
Sharyn says her entire flat is covered with little
sculptures of pigs, on account of her birth year. “Once, hor, I was really
bored, so I count how many I have. You know how many or not? Tree hundred and twenty tree! Siao or not, you tell me?”
Which is why this past weekend, we’ve all been on a
massive purge. I’ve emptied three quarters of my bookshelf. We did this with
the Two Year Rule. If a book is more than two years old, the odds that I will
ever read it are not good. The same rule immediately emptied four of five
drawers in Saffy’s room.
Two Years became Two Months for Amanda’s magazines.
The mound of magazines grew on the floor of the living room next to the books
and bras.
By the time we were done, you could barely make
your way from our bedrooms to the kitchen. Leave it to Amanda to stand there
for a few minutes, her lips moving silently and her fingers twitching before
she announced that we were probably throwing away five thousand dollars worth
of unused and unread stuff.
There was a moment’s silence as we all stared up at
the pile.
“Really?” Saffy said finally. “That’s…that’s a lot
of money…”
Amanda fixed Saffy with a look. “Don’t even think about it!”
Saffy shifted guiltily. “What? I’m just saying…I
mean, I know we said we were going to donate it to charity…but, really, what’s a
seventy year old granny in the old folks home going to do with a size-four
fluorescent string bikini?”
Amanda later said that this is the kind of mental
image that can give you a seizure.
1 comment:
Thumbs up for a good session of decluttering! Giving me the inspiration to declutter my place too.
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