Downsizing

[The simple life--Pat and his typewriter, 1961. Photo by Bun.]

As I may have mentioned before, I‘ve been downsizing the past few years.  But rather than getting rid of pounds around my waist, I’ve been getting rid of stuff. 

One way to get rid of stuff is to accumulate a number of sons-in-law.  Apparently through the process of osmosis, tools from my workshop somehow migrate to their workshops.  At first this annoyed me, but then I realized this was essentially an act of nature and there was nothing to be done about it.  It took me a while to realize the benefits of this process.  Without the tools, I’m not tempted to undertake wood-building projects and as a result I save time, money, energy and the embarrassment of having my works become a source of amusement for my neighbors who actually know how to build things.

In addition to the outward flow of tools, I have stopped buying stuff.  When I see something that ignites in me the urge to buy, I simply imagine a large mouth full of teeth somehow attached to it.  What the mouth gobbles up is time.  The larger and more expensive the object, the larger the mouth.

I once owned a cabin on a lake.  It was a beautiful place with a grand view of water and mountains and so on.  When I recall that cabin now, I realize that it came with an enormous mouth.  It gobbled up time in enormous bites.  Three full-time jobs could not have eaten more time.

Then there were the boats.  At one period of my life I had seven boats, counting all floating craft.  Half of them had motors.  Several had two or three motors, a big one, a small one, and a backup one.  These motors seriously enriched the owners of motor-repair shops but they also left me poverty stricken when it came to time.

I had a gun safe crammed with rifles and shotguns and handguns, modern firearms and muzzle-loaders.  Each one had a tiny mouth attached to it, unless, of course, I wanted to use it for hunting.  Then it instantly grew a huge mouth.  But firearms could not hold a candle to fishing paraphernalia.  Every little artificial fly in my fly boxes, which were the size of trunks, came with a huge and insatiable mouth.  My whole life could have been used simply to organize my collection of flies and the gathering of fly-tying material and tools.

True, I avoided organizing any of my fishing gear, and thereby saved some time from its thousands of time-gobbling mouths.  But that made me feel guilty.  It was years before I realized that fly fishing is a full-time endeavor that gobbles up whole lifetimes.  Any kind of fishing does.  One Christmas my wife gave me an ice-fishing tent, something I had always wanted.  Never once have I used it.  I’ve felt guilty about it ever since but there was no time left over from the gobbling mouths of all my accumulated objects.

Oddly, now that I can actually afford stuff, I buy practically nothing.  Right now I am sitting here in my gray and tattered old wool sweater.  (Okay, it isn’t supposed to be gray.)  My wife, Bun, yells at me, “Would you for Pete’s sake go out and buy yourself a new sweater!”

I would but I’m afraid to go into the mall and be surrounded by all those hungry mouths gnashing their sharp little teeth at me.