This summer, I cleaned out my garage. We hadn’t done that, well, since moving in. There are still things from the previous owner.
For context, we moved in in 2001!
Anyway, it was a cornicopia of discovery. I found:
- A rather nice doormat I’d forgotten I owned. Why had I moved it in there? It is now on the back door.
- A polka-dot chiar mat.
- Nine snow brushes for the car(!)
- Four snow shovels.
- Two pairs of gardening gloves. Three pairs of garden shears.
- A full bag of topsoil.
- An inflatable pool (punctured) and pool float (ditto.)
- Five boxes of old clothes.
But the biggest discovery came from the back left corner of the garage. There were three old buckets that had held tar or driveway seallent, there since we moved in. I had noticed something sticking out of one of them, a blue-and-white striped tote bag that definitely hadn’t been there when we moved in.
I peered in the bag and saw: a quarter-full bottle of tequila. Really good tequila! What the heck? I pulled it out and there was more stuff in the bag below it: An iPad, its charger, two men’s watches, a handful of change, and many little plastic tags for men’s shirts.
Was this some thief’s stash? Something my older sister left? A homeless person’s stash? A sign I should maybe start locking the garage? The iPad worked, and was full of photos of some well-off suburban family I didn’t recognize.
No idea. I took the stuff to the police station to see if anyone had reported it missing. No one had. The mystery will continue.
But the tequila was so smooth, and as I drank it, I thought about the things we own, the way ownership can vanish or re-appear. The way, with wealth, with storage, comes the potential of owning things you aren’t even aware of. Do you still own them, then?
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