Sunday Sweep-out

So much sadness.

“Don’t you want to play with me anymore?”

No. You’re a video camera we bought in 1989. You broke when Sk8r dropped you in, I dunno, 2000. You were so much better than your replacement, better features, better quality. But you didn’t work anymore. Been in a box ever since.

No. You’re a cable box a friend of mine reprogrammed in 1993 so it would get the Playboy Channel. But after a few years the cable company sent a signal you couldn’t deal with and you didn’t work anymore. Been in a box ever since.

No. You’re a cell phone from the ‘90s. You’re a friggin’ brick with buttons. Been in a box-- Wait, you’re hella retro. Children in future years will be amused and amazed at your girth. Yes, you can stay.

A three-foot stack of stereo receivers with blown output amps or noisy balance controls, long-obsolete VHS video recorders, the CD player I bought my then-girlfriend now-wife in 1985, a VHS-C camera my dad passed down, and – OMG! – a pair of EPI speakers I bought off a chemist at the refinery I worked at in 1980.

Still alive, watching me sadly.

“Is it really time to go?”

“Yes, I think so. Don’t be scared.” I try to smile.

How do we manage to keep so much … stuff?

There’s an impulse. “It still works.” “It was cool once.” This stuff looks so … not broken. And yet. Does it really do us any good to keep it? Does it?

Got a scanner here: an ISA bus card with a little doodad that hooks onto the carriage of an Epson line printer. When it was made, Reagan was still president, and it’s been obsolete since Clinton’s first term at the very latest. Ridiculous.

So it’ll all go. Call some ewaste recycler or other to come pick it up. Lighten the load. It’s all good. So why does it almost make me sad? Something weird about unfulfilled potential? A need to use things until they are literally driven into the ground? Or did I see one too many stupid animations about cute robots and talking toasters abandoned like unwanted orphans when their families move away, and some stupid part of my brain wants to save everybody, even the inanimate? No matter. Out! Don’t be scared! Git!

But first, some cannibalism. I did have fun taking the old video camera apart. I wanted the lenses. Yes, fun! A screwdriver is all you need. Now the bits are in a box, and those lenses, well, they're still good. I’ll think of something.