T IS FOR TRASH and TREASURE
They say, "One man's trash is another man's treasure". This is clearly true or there would be no such thing as a "yard sale" or a "garage sale" or "dumpster diving". The saying also supports charities like the Salvation Army that depend on donated clothes and discarded furniture from the 70's to generate their income.
It's also interesting to see what some people consider trash and other's can't bear to throw out (have you seen an episode of hoarders?). I have trouble throwing stuff away, but within reason. I'm not going to hang on to a gum wrapper because it might be useful someday, I'm just going to throw it out. But things like cards and ticket stubs, I tend to hang onto those for a while. I have a friend who is completely the opposite (let's call her anal retentive or AR for short). She lives as minimally as possible and pretty much anything not of immediate use to her is trash.
A few weeks back I made the mistake of having AR help me clean my room. Now, this experience was a complete disaster for a million reasons (she messed up my entire system of organization claiming hers was better, rewired my entire room because it was a "fire hazard" to have my hair straightener reach from the outlet to the mirror and insisted I learn to straighten my hair without looking at it, and put things in random places that I have yet to find them). However, one of the things that bothers me the most is that she would randomly throw things away that she deemed insignificant without at least consulting me first. Among these things was a series of small folded up papers on my nightstand.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I saw a piece of paper carefully folded and placed among a bunch of other pieces of paper in the same fashion, I might begin to question if there was a reason they were there. If it had been crumpled, it would be a completely different story, but to take the time to fold it perfectly I believe indicates that what is on that paper might have some sort of importance or significance. Apparently AR just thought any little piece of paper was useless and should be disposed of. Well, AR was wrong.
I actually had a lot of important information on those pieces of paper - phone numbers, websites to look up (mostly with job opportunities), random things I wanted to blog about, etc. I have a terrible memory, and this is my method of refreshing it. I would write down what I wanted to remember on a small notepad, fold it perfectly into quarters and put it in my back pocket. At the end of the day I would empty it onto my nightstand. I would eventually program the numbers into my phone and look up the websites or write the blog posts, but I couldn't always do it right away. And when that happened, I would just leave my folded up reminder on my night stand so that I could do it eventually.
Well it had been a particularly busy week and I hadn't had time to go over my little reminder slips in a while. That was one of the reasons I had recruited AR's help to clean my room in the first place - I just hadn't had time to do it myself and I was having company over the next day. Anyway, my "memory pile" was a bit larger than usual when I finally settled down to take care of them - or at least it should have been. At first I thought they must have fallen behind my nightstand, or under my bed or something, they just couldn't be gone! After looking for them for about 25 minutes (I don't have a big room and it had just been cleaned) I determined that they must have gotten thrown away.
I've never brought it up with her because a) I didn't want to appear ungrateful for her help and b) I'm sure throwing away what she would consider pieces of useless scrap would not register as something significant enough to remember, and therefore she would never be able to say one way or another. How am I so sure that she did it? Well, if what I've already told you isn't enough to convince you, keep in mind that I consider my room my sanctuary. I don't allow my sister to come in it when I'm home and she lives with me - and she's my sister! I can literally count on one hand the number of people who have been in my room since I moved in - 1) Me, 2) My sister (she comes in when I'm not home or to piss me off) 3) My dad (he is my landlord after all) 4) Andy (remember him?) and 5) AR this one time. Of these 5 people, only 3 were in my room in the time the papers went missing - AR, Andy and myself (and even if my dad or sister were in my room, they know better than to touch my stuff). I wouldn't dispose of them (obviously) and I was in the room the whole time Andy was except for when he changed, so unless he decided to clean off my night stand while he got dressed, I don't think he moved them. And then there's AR, who was not only at the scene of the crime but has a motive too!
I guess what it comes down to is don't write something off as trash until you know what it is. And really, that works for a lot of things in life. To put things
as cliché as possible,
Don't judge a book by it's cover. You never know what that book meant to someone, and should probably find out before you make fun of your friend for reading it. Hell some of the best books have terrible covers, I mean look at this edition of
Catcher in the Rye; stupid cover for an awesome book! Or who knows? That nerdy girl with the awkward outfit might be a really interesting person but you will never know if you keep shoving her into lockers. And those little pieces of paper might happen to have critical pieces of information on them, but you'll never know if you just throw them away.
. This is by far the funniest and most underrated movie I have ever seen! I find myself quoting it constantly, and it's not just me - it's my entire family. We have managed to work some of our favorite lines into everyday conversations, or will just randomly text one for fun. Don't believe it's all it's cracked up to be? Check it out:
. It was absolutely adorable! We had so much fun, we still talk about it to this day. (Yes, I'm still friend's with some of my exes.)
