Okay, I know this isn’t a meme; however, the truth of the comic strip made me laugh out loud. You see, the funniest things in life are those that hit closest to home.
My father (who I loved dearly and always treated me with respect) had a storage shed. When I say had a storage shed, I mean the full-size double garage storage shed. My dad moved stuff in and out regularly; we would rearrange the items, stack, sort, and buy new storage bins for the items; however, he would never throw anything away.
I’m not sure if my dad never threw anything away because a large part of the storage shed held my stepmother’s household items. Or if he had a minor hoarder mentality that kept my father sending the monthly checks to the locker company.
As I got older, and whenever the three of us children were in town (a rarity as Jan lived in Alaska and I lived in Oklahoma at the time), my father would drag us down to the storage shed, throw open the door, and ask if there was anything we wanted. I’m not sure what this ritual was all about, and it occurred far enough apart that perhaps he had forgotten he had previously offered us his collection; however, we would all say no, and he would close and lock the door.
After moving back to my hometown of Cedar City and building a house, I called my dad one day and asked if we could look at the storage shed items again. He agreed, and as we stood in front of the open door, I said, “you know, dad, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll take it all.” So, we hauled load after load to our new house (much to the chagrin of my loving wife). Our three-car garage was at capacity, but the storage shed was empty. Later my dad would confess to receiving a thank-you card from the owners who had purchased the storage company many years before and noted in the card that my dad had been a “valued” client even with the prior owners. I confessed that I had run a compounding investment illustration of his monthly payments and he could have paid cash for my new house. We both laughed.
I would later sort through my “inheritance,” taking most to the landfill, some to the local charity, and my enterprising son would sell a good number of vacuum tubes on eBay (my father being a part-time TV repairman). All in all, seeing this cartoon brought back more fond memories of my father than bad ones; however, I adopted the phrase, “When in doubt throw it out,” for my household with a vow to never spend money on a storage shed unless I was moving.