Lots and Lots of Crap

When I moved out on my own I sure did not have much. I took my bed and my dresser from the bedroom I shared with my brother, my records (no record player) and my Bobby Orr table hockey game. The hockey set would come in handy when people visited me in my new apartment and we got fall over drunk. I did not even have a typewriter which is sort of odd for someone who always wanted to be a writer.

After I was settled into my furnishless apartment a couple sweet gals sewed me up some long floor pillows and someone else picked me up a sparkletop kitchen table and chairs. I bought a stereo for my records and beer bottles and butts piled up on the sparkletop as we drank and smoked and listened to the music the hippy fuck djs in Dope City would not play on the radio.

My mom started sending me over stuff from home too. People are not happy for you not having much stuff in your apartment. She sent over a pot I still use camping and a green coffee pot that perked passable coffee for 13 years. One day I filled up the basket with coffee and plugged it in to the wall and nothing happened. No fucking coffee. I went to the K-Mart and bought an automatic coffee maker that made much better coffee but I missed the intestinal bubbling sounds of the old green percolator in the morning.

Slowly other ornaments and so-called necessities made their way into my various punk rock apartments. Everything from huka pipes to Elvis velvet. The floor pillows made way for my dad's old home made furniture and lamps started popping up like Anne Murray hits on the radio.

When Sonja and I rented our first house the shit really started to pile up. Some of it bought, some of it given to us. When people know you have room in your house for stuff they know they can save themselves a trip to the dump. Jimi's dad gave me my first lawnmower when the landlord's mower crapped out. It shot rocks through the rusted holes of its ancient body but it cut the grass just fine.

Now I live in a house bigger than any of the houses I have lived in before. It is too big for us but not big enough for all the stuff people have given us to fill it up over the years. Every closet and cupboard is full of crap. We have a lot of polishes: floor polish, shoe polish, car polish, furniture polish, metal polish ... what the fuck is up with all the polish in our lives?

I do not have a table hockey game any more. I carried it from one place to another until Sonja made me throw the fucker out. But every time I see a cool hockey set in a store I want to buy it and play except I have no room to set it up.