On Keeping Things I Don’t Use
In college, I owned a double-bed made of wood that featured a hard, flat surface which worked for my nonchalance about thread counts, or any comfort associated with a contraption for sleeping. I didn’t sleep much anyway, and when I did, it was mainly to pass out.
But with a narrow double-bed, women did not sleep over, and if they did, that meant I slept on the floor (STILL OK), or on the living room couch. Fine fine, but a lot of women (OK, a few women) complained both about my absence during sleep time and the associated back pain if you’re unused to sleeping on a hard surface.
Whenever their cries of “Spencer, how the fuck am I supposed to crash here?” rang out, I politely offered my bed and moved to the ground. This caused no small amount of chagrin among the more cuddle-prone lady friends, but I always added the retort of “My old man built that bed, I’m keeping it for as long as it stays upright.”
Then I met a lady friend that made all other lady friends insignificant, and disclaimers about my father having built the bed sounded even more ridiculous. I wanted to spend the night with her in my bed, but the narrow frame combined with our accumulated heights, led to some uncomfortable post-coital interactions.
Eventually THE lady friend came to visit my family, and after a few Sambucas, it was revealed my old man did not, in fact, build the bed. He built my bunk-bed, but the narrow double was unrelated to my father’s carpentry skills (we had a sauna he made in the basement throughout high school).
This led my lady friend to decry my, now obsolete from familial nostalgia, bed. It would be gone within a couple weeks of our having returned to DC. I bought a new bed, and we enjoyed many nights together with it’s comfortable box spring and lavishly wide Queen frame.
I also own a television set. It’s an anachronistic television set, without a built in antenna, but also without a cable box set up since I don’t have cable. The television sits in my living room attached to nothing. It just sits there, lonely as my bank account.
My grandfather on my mother’s side purchased the television set and a VCR for me before I went off to college. Shortly thereafter, he passed away. I can’t bring myself to sell it or throw it away. It’s from my grandfather.
I don’t want the TV set, and its girth makes transporting it a huge assignment. I’m not even sure it survived my move from Harlem in working order since my DVD player and VCR both broke during the move. So why do I keep it?
Aside from the American flag he was given during his burial ceremony, and a swath of pins from his time in WWII (he was a sniper who fought in the landing at Normandy, Battle of the Bulge and North Africa), I don’t own many keepsakes from my departed grandfather.
So I keep this relic of a television set, and I even feel his presence on occasion; which is something because of my strongly secular brain. The television set might be with me for the rest of my life. A humble reminder of a simpler time when there were actually television stores (my grandfather worked at one during his retirement to get out of the house).
Maybe I’m crazy, but the television set stays while everything else swirls around me with no significance. I can cuddle just fine with the lady friend, and the TV doesn’t have anything to do with it. Miss you grandpa.
