Junk - My Secret Life As A Junk Man Or My New Cognitive Behavioral Materialism Therapy

Like many other Americans I was once a slave to stuff. I had more than I needed. No more. I owe my enlightenment to being junk dealer. I have to come clean and admit that I dealt with pallets, pickups, box vans and even warehouses full of the flotsam and jetsam of America. I was a weekend warrior.

It all started with the wife wanting to turn her hobby into a job. So instead of watching ball games on the weekends like other guys I get to drive her International truck and haul junk from flea market to crafts show to collectibles fair and back again. We did them all. The final step in curing my materialism was the locker auction because up to that point we had only been junk amateurs.

You have probably seen a storage locker complex near where you live. These things are springing up wherever there is a gas station or trailer park now, which is almost everywhere. It's because we Americans have way too much stuff; we don't know where to put it and can't bear throwing it away just yet though we don't actually know why.

Unfortunately some of us just go too far out buying stuff for our own good and we go belly up. Eventually we can't pay our storage bill and the locker's contents are auctioned off to the highest bidder. In comes the junk man or perhaps better stated, the junk people. People like us.

So we buy all your personal stuff you kept in your storage locker because you didn't want anyone finding it at your house. Good thinking. Your loss becomes our gain so to speak. And it goes downhill from there.

My tale of woe worsens as my junk person dealer wife starts buying truckload after truckload of auctioned storage lockers. She simply cannot believe her good fortune. No need to waste time at flea markets, EBay, thrift stores and yard sales anymore; now there is a way to buy junk by the truckload. And what fun! For sometimes as little as fifteen dollars one can buy an entire storage locker filled to the ceiling with junk. What a bargain! Too good to be true!

So I'm thinking after buying several dozen of these lockers with no place to put them, the game is up. We've got nowhere to put this stuff. Finally we can retire from hustling junk and go back to being normal weekend people once again. Maybe spend some quality time together and watch a ball game or two. Boy was I wrong. Just like Buddha, I way underestimated the power of junk.

Strategically, I'm thinking that we are going to have to start renting storage lockers to put all this stuff that we are buying in. That's what I get for thinking strategically. Not us. We don't always think strategically. We end up renting, if you will pardon my expression, a frigging warehouse.

One day I'm sitting down in the middle of our frigging warehouse and crying. We are caught up in a bad Bunuel movie or Kafka novel that never ends. I can envision another warehouse and another and eventually we would own all the junk in town. Sooner or later we would be bidding on our own storage lockers. We would be recycling junk to ourselves. Our motto would be 'We Are the Flea Market!'

If you ever feel like this, please restrain yourself and don't end it all just yet. Try relaxing first and using a bit of my cognitive behavioral therapy; you will feel so much better afterwards because unlike drugs and alcohol it really works.

Sit your worn and tired bones down in a warehouse surrounded by your very own junk. Wallow around in it; get to know the feeling. It is a helpless feeling of pain; feel the pain. Get to know the feeling that you went to battle against your greed and corresponding junk and you got your rear end whupped. Learn to live with how badly that feels and just what that reveals about your inner character.

But just remember, as bad as it may seem you can't give up; you have to keep trying. You have family and friends that need you to be strong for them. Because you will be tested each and every day for the rest of your life.

Such as, 'We can't throw that out because it's only missing that one piece and sooner or later we're going to come across it and then it will be complete and worth a lot of money.'

In theory perhaps, but we never do in practice find that piece because it's Twilight Zone redux. The devil himself is holding that missing piece in his hand and laughing at us right now. And besides, it's certainly chipped, cracked, dinged, scoured, pitted, scratched or a shoddy reproduction. For two bucks our neurotic customers expect perfect, original junk.

As you can probably tell from my jaded attitude I'm undergoing junk dealer's cognitive behavioral rehab therapy along with several other former junk dealers in my area. This article is part of my patient recovery plan. I'm also required to spend four hours each weekend sitting in a pile of my own junk. And then I have to write about my experiences in my journal. This is today's entry.

But hey, I'm cured. I don't want to go to the mall and buy stuff I don't need anymore. I don't even want to go and buy the stuff I do need. I don't even want to go to the frigging mall at all. I'm cured. I can take junk or leave it now and I'll leave it with you thank you very much. Been there; done that stuff thing. No mas.

Besides, Buddha and I prefer traveling lightly.