Space For The Papa

 

Hello, Dear Readers.  It’s good to see you.

Every now and then, I have these odd moments when I realize that I’m exactly like my parents.  For the most part, of course, I like to believe that I’m my own person.  I have my own ideas about how the world should work and about what’s important.  My mother, for example, thinks that panicking is a complete and utter waste of time.  I, however, believe that panicking is a skill that should be practiced and practiced often, even if it means freaking out over pretty much nothing at all.  And I have my own concerns, too.  I mean, my father worries about things like running out of empty cardboard boxes and bungee cords; I worry about things like renting an apartment and having the landlord tell me that I should definitely let him know “if the snakes come back.” So, in as far as being your own person means having your own problems, I’m definitely my own person.

Then again, it’s not so strange to think that I’m going to be like my parents in some ways.  After all, these are the first people who took a shot at defining “normal” for me, and the older I get, the more I realize that there is a distinct possibility that my parents had no clue what they were talking about when they did it.  In our family, “normal” really just means “not radically abnormal,” and even if something falls into the “radically abnormal” category, we’re still kind of willing to keep it around if it’s not too dangerous and sort of fun.

I mean, as kids, my little sister and I used to buy rolls of caps even though neither of us had a cap gun.  We’d just lay out the rolls in the backyard and hit them with a metal bar.  And occasionally, we’d scream and yell, too.  We figured that if we did it just right, the neighbors would think there was gunplay at our house.  I don’t know why we wanted them to think that, but we did.  Of course, we also used to tack bottle caps onto the bottoms of our tennis shoes and walk around pretending we were wearing golf cleats.  So, we were a little strange, but then again, one of our friends down the street was a boy who used to come over and dress up in my mom’s old evening gowns, and I guess that in the ultimate scheme of things, being a gun-toting golfer kind of paled in comparison to being a pre-pubescent transvestite.  But he was a nice kid, and in all honesty, he could pull off a red strapless dress better than anyone else in the neighborhood.  And that counted for something with us.

Anyway, one of the many, many odd things that my father used to do was to go out and wander aimlessly through Pay ‘N Pak.  And that’s exactly how he termed it.  He wasn’t going over to Pay ‘N Pak to get a few things.  He wasn’t going out to buy some stuff.  He was going to “wander aimlessly through Pay ‘N Pak.”  And that’s exactly what he did, too. I don’t think my mom ever had to worry about anything with him except that he was going to spend every penny they had buying stuff there.

One day, I’d been out with my dad running some errands, and as we were getting ready to head home, he looked over at me and said, “Let’s go wander aimlessly through Pay ‘N Pak.”  I, of course, agreed.  I mean, being asked to accompany my dad on a trip to Pay ‘N Pak was like being invited to go on a safari with British royalty.  In my family, it was an absolute honor second only to being allowed to use the lawnmower. 

Anyway, we headed off toward the gleaming green sign in the distance.  Now, what Pay ‘N Pak actually was is a little hard to describe.  In some ways, it was like the forerunner of Lowe’s and Home Depot in that they specialized in building materials.  But they also carried auto parts and sporting goods, and really, there was no telling what you might find there.  It was one of the original stores aimed at the residential do-it-yourself crowd, and they had pretty much everything you would need for that.  They were really one of the first warehouse stores around, and going there was quite an adventure, especially with my dad. 

So, we went in, and I quickly discovered that my dad wasn’t lying about the “wandering aimlessly” part of that trip.  We just went from aisle to aisle looking at things and just getting more and more sucked into the experience.  It was what my wide-eyed, 10 year-old brain imagined an acid trip would be like.  You see, one of the ways that my father and I are alike is that whenever we see some object, we immediately start thinking of things we could make with it.  And of course, Pay ‘N Pak was filled with nothing but things you could make things with.  So, there we were, mesmerized to the point of hypnosis by displays of plumbing supplies and endless rolls of electrical wiring and shiny, shiny tools, and at one point, I think my father may have had to loan me his handkerchief to wipe a little drool off my chin.

Finally, we ended up in front of a large bin full of some kind of electrical switches and gadgets that were on clearance.  I didn’t know what any of them did, but I thought they were very pretty with all their different colored wires and clicking switches.  I wanted all of them, and if I had had any money when I was a kid, that’s where it would’ve gone.  Anyway, my dad sorted carefully through the bin for a while and finally picked out some to buy.  While we were waiting in the check-out line, I turned to him and asked, “What are those things anyway?”  He held one up, turned it over a few times, clicked its switches, and then said, “I have no idea.”  I’m pretty sure that’s why he felt he needed a whole bag of them.

Anyway, I was thinking back to that adventure the other day when a Lowe’s employee tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Can I help you find something?”  I was standing in front of a wood paneling display with absolutely no recollection of how I’d gotten there.  I vaguely remembered entering the store and seeing that I had a tube of vinyl floor adhesive in my hand, I assumed that I must’ve been fully conscious of my surroundings at some point, but somewhere between the grout aisle and a whole row of rubber tubing, I’d just been sucked into the zone.  So, I had wandered trance-like through the store until that employee brought me back.  “Is there something I can help you with?”  Of course, one part of my brain was like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly screaming “Help me!  Help me!” but the bigger part of my brain was busy wondering how hard it would be to panel the ceiling of my apartment with genuine simulated wood grain aluminum, so all I was able to get out was, “No, I’m fine.”

I’m not really sure of what happened next.  I only remember it in flashes.  Kitchen cabinets, closet organizers, plywood sheets, washer/dryer sets, venetian blinds, rebar, table saws, cases of batteries, rows of light bulbs, it’s all a blur to me.  And I don’t know how long I was in there, either.  All I know is that when I went in, it was light out, and when I got home, it was dark.  And I had a tube of floor adhesive, some silicon grout, a deluxe painter’s tool, a mini brush set, and a plastic storage case.  I felt like Anthony Perkins in The Manchurian Candidate, only everything was more beautiful and Angela Lansbury wasn’t there.

It wasn’t until I finally got around to thinking about the project I had to do, though, that I realized the way in which I am exactly like my father:  we are both on the universal quest for space.  And by “space” I don’t mean the Final Frontier.  I mean “storage.”  After all, you can only buy so many curious gadgets and electrical devices at Pay ‘N Pak, bring home so many cars and motorcycles from police auctions, and drag so much lumber out of dumpsters at construction sites before you find that you have no place to put all that stuff.  And that’s when the real challenge begins, and you realize that you have to create some storage space.

Now, my goal in life is to containerize everything I own.  I could happily live in a house made of nothing but clearly labeled Rubbermaid storage bins.  In fact, if I ever have a house, I want it to have giant flaps that come down all around it and tie together at the bottom.  And I’m going to install an enormous handle on the roof.  Basically, I want it to be like I’m living in my mother’s purse.  That way, if I decide to move, I can just pick up my whole house with a crane and put it down somewhere else.  That’s my dream in life.  I want to live in a giant carrying case.

My parents, though, have been a little more realistic about their storage issues.  My dad always has a stack of empty cardboard boxes at the ready, and he can build shelves out of virtually anything.  All the houses my parents have owned have had unfinished basements, and without fail, the first thing my father did to all those spaces was build closets.  In fact, in one house, he never finished the rest of the basement.  He just built two huge closets, and as far as he was concerned, the basement was finished. 

In the house my parents live in now, they really sort of outdid even themselves.  The place already had an attic and space above the garage, but in addition to the two garden sheds they built in the backyard, they also added a whole other room on the side of the house.  And it’s a big room, too.  In terms of square footage, I think it’s bigger than my whole apartment.  And nearly one-third of it is taken up by two gigantic closets, which were, of course, the first things my father built.  In fact, I think that if my mother hadn’t been involved with building the addition, there would just be four bare walls, a plywood floor, and those two beautiful closets. 

But probably the most outstanding thing about the addition is what’s underneath it.  My parents dug out a four-foot hole under the entire room and left it as a crawl space to use for storage.  The only problem is that they didn’t put a door on it.  Now, in their defense, part of the addition is built next to what used to be an exterior wall, and since the crawl space is underground, they would’ve had to dig the hole about five feet deeper if they wanted to put a door from the basement into it.  And I just don’t think they wanted to go to that much trouble.  Besides, if they had done that, then the crawl space would’ve just become an unfinished part of the basement, and my dad would’ve just built a closet in it.  So, the rest of the space would’ve gone to waste. 

As it stands now, some brave soul who is immune to being repeatedly bitten by spiders has to climb in there through what used to be a basement window.  No one in my actual family will do it, but it’s usually possible to pay off some unsuspecting neighborhood teenager to go in.  Once. Failing that, my parents have had good luck in talking my ex-brother-in-law into taking the plunge, which is quite the feat given that at 6’6”, he’s probably not the easiest person in the world for my parents to shove through a basement window.

The thing is that I can just imagine some archeologists 2000 years from now doing an excavation and discovering my parents’ house.  They would no doubt believe that my parents were some kind of royalty just based on the amount of stuff they had stored around.  And when they uncovered the crawl space, they would be certain that they had stumbled upon a treasure room just like the one in King Tut’s tomb.  They might even find my ex-brother-in-law’s mummified body in there.  Then the whole collection would be put on display in a museum, and people would come from far and wide and would pay good money just to gaze at a discarded oscilloscope, our old Christmas tree, a tiny stuffed alligator, and ten PC Jrs.

Of course, all that really makes you wonder if everything we think we know about the ancient Egyptians is wrong.  Maybe they were just people like my parents.  I mean, maybe the Sphinx was just the ancient equivalent of a lawn ornament that someone picked up at a scratch-and-dent clearance at the ancient version of Costco. Maybe all those gold trinkets were just mystery gadgets from the ancient prototype for Pay ‘N Pak.  Maybe the Pharaohs were just nice people living in the suburbs who figured, “Well, we might as well get some stuff since we’ve got this whole pyramid to fill up.”   I can just picture a bunch of ancient Egyptian settlers trying to escape from the rat race of city life standing out in the desert in t-shirts that say “Go big or go home.”

I, myself, don’t have a suburban pyramid.  I live in an apartment the size of a coffee cup, and in fact, my current stock of building supplies is just for sticking the edge of the kitchen floor back down.  But after I’ve got the floor back where it belongs, I’ve got a 1950s metal cabinet just waiting to be moved over there and filled up with stuff.  So, I can’t work on the grand scale that my father, the true master of space, does, but I’ve definitely got the potential.  And it’s funny that as much time as we spend as adults convincing ourselves that we’re nothing like the people who raised us, the simple truth is that every now and then, we’re exactly like them.  And there’s something sort of nice about that because a family tradition, no matter what kind of foible or downright nutty thinking it’s based on, is still a family tradition.  And I think it’s good to pass something more than just your genes down the generational line.  But beyond all that, when you really stop to think about it, there’s just a certain amount of practicality to it all.  I mean, I don’t know about you, Dear Readers, but I don’t know too many people who couldn’t make good use of a little more closet space.

Philosophy for a hungry planet.

Enjoy. 

 
© R. Rissler, 2011.  All rights reserved.