Do you keep every odd bit of paper that floats into your life? Do you have random piles of junk mail, old receipts, antique bank statements, odd scraps of paper with strange or cryptic messages? “Call Charles–cat caught in disposal–need plumber or animal control?” But you not only don’t recognize the writing, you don’t recognize the message either? Tonight I tackled a random pile of such papers and made three piles: shred, recycle, does anyone know what this is? I can throw things out. I am not one of those poor hoarders that has been caught in the lights of a television reality show. I truly do not understand what makes hoarding interesting enough for television. Those poor devils have an obsessive compulsive disorder and they need help, not national television exposure. So I tackled a random stack of old receipts, scrap papers and what have you. And I threw it all away–some to shredding, but it all goes to recycling. Most of this stuff was from about 2005. Either I wasn’t throwing anything away that year or these papers have been in hiding. I didn’t find any old treasures (or old treasure maps), nothing that had been lost many years, nothing that needed finding. So I ask myself, “Self, why didn’t you throw all of this away ages ago?” It’s just been sitting around gathering dust and grit for seven years. Yes, there are times when it pays to stack and not throw out. Very infrequently will I find some scrap of something that will remind me of another time, of an old writing project, of a person I haven’t seen in a long time, of a debt that was paid, an object that was bought, a dinner that was enjoyed, but all of these relics remind me of how fast the clock moves, how quickly we forget even when we swear we will always remember, an already forgotten unforgettable afternoon in a distant past that has sunk into the shadows of history. I throw away things so that those who come after me will not be burdened with the effort of having to do it themselves. I’ve seen others given the task of throwing out old papers, and it is a horrible task–going through the life of another person. Me, hopefully when it is my turn to go, everything will already be on its way to recycling.