Not the Lumps of Plastic

We went out for breakfast today, or should I say we went out for brunch to the Red Lantern pub, which is just down the street from Meagan’s place. If it were any later, we would have had to call it “Brupper”.


On the way to the pub, as I was walking I saw a man with two Huskys walking towards me. I told him that he had beautiful dogs and he asked if I would like to pet them. Being a retired letter carrier, my initial reaction is to tell the guy to keep a firm hold of his dogs and just keep on marching away from me. However, not wanting to hurt his feelings I decided that I would pet the dogs and as I was doing so, I noticed that both dogs had shaved spots on their bodies. Me being me, I thought that this guy is doing some kind of surgical experiments on his dogs and since it wasn’t too long ago that I read The Island of Doctor Moreau”, this vexed me somewhat. I asked him “What happened to Doobee?” which was the second dogs name.


He told me that Doobee had colon cancer and Jules had a cancerous cyst removed from his side. WOW! What are the chances of both your dogs getting two different types of cancer? He told me that they were both doing well and hopefully they were given a few more years. I wished him well and they went on their way to find interesting smells and new places to pee. The dogs, not the guy…I hope.


I picked up a Philips brass bolt that was in the gutter. It is about an inch long and just the kind of thread that might come in useful some time. Last night on the subway coming home from the Second City show I found a small aluminum carabiner under one of the seats. I had found a large hoop earring earlier, but that would have been far too odd a keepsake even for me. These are the kind of things that I bring back from vacations, instead of little carved knick-knacks, clothing or pottery.


I will see these crappy little things in years to come and they will bring back memories of the trip probably more than anything else will. I don’t know why or when I started to do this, but it is the little bits of garbage that seems to have meaning for me. When we were in Hawaii, I picked up a white plastic lump that was on the beach and a tiny bit of driftwood. It isn’t in any special place, well, just in the top drawer of the desk in my room. I come across it every now and then when I am going through the drawers looking for things that need to be tossed out. So far the white plastic lump has made the cut.


When I was packing for the trip to Toronto, I saw the ball of blue twine that I picked up in California. It was out by the garbage cans in an alley that was on my way to Jack-in-the-Box. I stooped down, quickly coiled it and stuffed it in my pocket like it was one of the crown jewels. I felt that I was stealing something important, like anyone would care about a short length of twine. There was a hunk of wire from California, but for some reason it has failed to hold my interest. I guess it has no real practical use for me.


I suppose that when I die, whoever is cleaning out the dribs and drabs of my life won’t even give these things a second thought. They shouldn’t either, because they are really just garbage. Well, to everyone else these items are garbage, but to me these are lifemarkers that I have used to jog my memories of fun times and most of them are somewhat useful. Well, not the lumps of plastic.