It seems that I have a weird habit of attracting various items that won’t go away.  I should explain.  Walk with me.

Back in college, my roommate, S, and I threw a party for the Equestrian team.  We awoke the next morning to a keg stuck to our living room floor.  We don’t know who brought it and no one claimed it.

S was, what I call, a “saver.”  She didn’t hoard things so much as she just saved them over time, thinking that one day they would cause her great financial gain.  ”But you don’t eat that cereal,” I would remark about a coupon that lay dormant in our catch-all drawer.  To which she would argue that someone damn well better because it’s 32 cents off.  I always wondered if she knew she was just kidding herself, but I think she was a true believer.  I soon learned that taste and allergies be damned, the coupon wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the keg.  S hatched a plan to return the keg and be awarded some kind of deposit and thus it became our “$40 goldmine.”  The problem was that neither one of us could manage to drag our lazy selves all of the 1.2 miles to the store to claim the reward.  Instead, we just moved it from place to place.  It lived in my shower the weekend that her parents visited and eventually became a table.  Before Christmas vacation, all doped up on hot-tea, DayQuil and the spirit of giving, we finally dragged the keg to the dumpster.

Apparently, the keg had other plans.  When we returned from the holidays, there it was, sitting on our door step.  Complete with a new pump, left over, we guessed, from its own Christmas adventure.  ”The keg has chosen us,” she whispered.  It was weird, but I still wanted it gone.  

She disagreed.  ”Maybe it was Santa.  Or God.”

“Maybe it was that asshole on the first floor.”

“Whatever.  Its got a pump now so that has to be at least worth an extra $10.”

She got that far-off look in her eyes, like she was Scrooge McDuck swimming in the $50 in change that she would eventually receive and I knew that it was hopeless.  The keg returned to our living room, radiating immaturity and regret to visitors and the weekly Bible study that we hosted.

Seven years and 6 episodes of Hoarders later, I am even more adverse to being “chosen” by random items.  I thought the days to accumulating crap I don’t need were over.  I was wrong.  Enter the Thinker:

This little beauty moved in with my law school roommate and me during our third year.  She swears it isn’t hers and I know it isn’t mine.  I asked her to take it with her when she moved out after we took the Virginia Bar, but she was too exhausted to move it and I was too exhausted to protest.  When I moved to Georgia, I could have sworn that I left it, but, somehow, the Thinker followed me.  I’m concerned that if I throw it away, the Thinker will return after Christmas with a hat or other accessory.  I catch myself watching it from the corner of my eye as if it’s a character in Toy Story and there’s a horse, a cowgirl and a prospector waiting to complete the set.

I think I’ll give it to S to cherish and entertain thoughts of eventually selling.