On the stories told by old stuff
So, in the past few days, I have taken a large amount of “old textiles” to the “textile recycling” drop points. My drops are distinct, since they are coming in the only bags that I have available, the bright yellow german recycling bags intended for the curbside pickup.
It occurs to me that anyone sorting through the stuff could build a pretty complete, though somewhat whimsical picture of my life. Ne* could tell that the clothing that I like, I wear until it is, like Larry King, more dead than functional. Ne could tell that I had probably been in england from my UEA Pirates wind breaker that I simply never wear. Ne could tell that I had been in the military by all the BDU uniforms, with recently removed patches, that I put away. Ne could tell that I played sports, but not too seriously, by the rarely used and inexpensive cleats that went into the bucket. The myriad of mis-matched but fairly nice towels would say that either I enjoyed garage sales, or that I had relatives who liked to give me useful things that they no longer wanted.
And on and on.
One of the crazy things about blink was that people with 15 minutes access to someone else’s room were, IIRC, as accurate in their descriptions of the person than the person’s friends were. To a certain extent, I’m not even sure you need the full room…just a subset will do for significant portions of a persons personality.
*I’m use-testing this new, gender Neutral pronoun…tell me what you think. I know most of you hate the idea, but I just always long for a nice, english, gender neutral pronoun.
Also, even though it’s been a mere 3 days since I posted last, I had to upgrade wordpress again. I’m glad they’re active but JEEZ can’t they program with security in mind in the first place??