In Defense of the Burn Pile

I am waiting for the truck from Habitat for Humanity.

I was stupid when I decided what to take to the new house. I should have left everything except my bed in Miami and given it away. Instead I saved some things that were heavy, expensive to move, and destined to be discarded. I paid to move things 300 miles so I could throw them out.

My dad has a Thomasville entertainment center from maybe 2005. See if you can guess why I’m getting rid of it. Yes, that is correct. It was made when a 30-inch TV was considered enormous, so it will not hold a typical 2018 TV. It’s about 5 feet tall, with two big doors in front. The living room TV, which is only 42″, is on top of it. I never, ever watch TV in that room. My dad spends most of his time there, and he has to look up to see the screen.

I also have a huge pair of dresser things. They form a complex that looks like the Petronas Towers. There are two tall dressers joined by a suspended desk in the middle. My mother bought them from an estate liquidation shop.

The truck interrupted me while I was writing this. The junk is now gone. I could have sold it on consignment and gotten a couple of hundred bucks, but I just did not want to see it any more.

The reason I started to write is this: I wanted to talk about how hard it is to give things away.

Ocala has Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Goodwill won’t pick up furniture. That may sound incredible, but it’s true. I shouldn’t have to point out that picking up free furniture is profitable. If you don’t think you can sell it, you turn it down. If it looks good, you sell it and make money. For some reason, Goodwill Industries can’t make it work, even though other charities can.

The Salvation Army makes it work, or at least they claim to. They have a truck that picks up furniture, but you can’t get them to show up. They take phone messages. They say they’ll get back to you. Then they vanish.

Someone mentioned Habitat for Humanity, and I jumped on it. I was sick of the furniture. I would have given it to Annoying Vegans for Mandatory Nudity on Mass Transit, had such an organization offered to take it.

Habitat for Humanity gave me a date about ten days off. That was the best they could do.

They were supposed to come today between 2:30 and 4:30. At 12:15, I got in the car to take my dad to a notary public, thinking I had time. The Habitat people called and said they were on the way over.

Unbelievable.

They wanted me to meet them in half an hour, or about 12:45. I told them about the original appointment, and I said I couldn’t be there until 1:00. So 15 extra minutes. The driver started telling me he didn’t know if that would work. He said he would have to call the shop.

I pictured myself using the tractor to put Thomasville furniture on the burn pile.

I called their shop myself, and they apologized and worked it out for me. Under the new agreement, the truck was supposed to be here at 1:00. They arrived 10 minutes later. So 1:00 was too late, but 1:10 was fine.

Call me cynical, but my assumption is that the driver really, really wanted to get to lunch early. People had canceled appointments, and he had visions of a short day, followed by a trip to Sonic, dancing in his head.

Maybe I’m wrong.

I had to move a desk into the entertainment center’s place to hold up the TV and keep my dad happy until the new TV thing arrives. While I was doing this, I found a huge grey smudge on the wall, around an imperfection in the paint. I know what caused it. I can guess. My dad has been rubbing spit into the wall ever since we got here, trying to rub out a place where the paint has been gouged.

He does things like that. Spit won’t make new paint magically appear, but he tries, and telling him to knock it off is pointless. Rubbing spit on things is a compulsion for him.

I didn’t know spit could make a dark shadow on a wall.

I told him not to rub the spot any more, and he denied that he had. Par for the course.

I got some paper towels and so on and cleaned the hand-sized spit varnish area off the wall, and then I got a Post-It and a marker. I put up a little sign reading, “Do Not Rub This Spot.”

The house is full of signs. “Do not wash dishes by hand.” “Stay off porch.” “No underwear in trash.” It looks pretty odd, but there is no other way to help him avoid causing problems.

I have several notes in his closet, telling him to put his dirty clothes in the hamper instead of hanging them up, and he hangs them up anyway. He doesn’t realize his clothes smell bad. He has no sense of smell. He thinks we are somehow losing money when we wash dirty clothes, just as he thinks it’s more expensive to wash 20 things in the dishwasher than 10.

I have other things to get rid of. I’m going to get rid of my aunt Jean’s living room chairs. My mother took them after Jean died from lung cancer in 1994. They are horrible chairs, and my mother chose a very loud paisley fabric for them. I almost threw them out before we left Miami, but I knew my dad would need something to sit on.

I want to get rid of my parents’ double bed and dresser. These were the first pieces of furniture they bought after they married. My dad has consistently refused to get rid of them, even though no one uses double beds now. Now that I’m in charge, they’re going. I used to sleep on that bed when I was a kid, during the worst years of my life, and I used the dresser. I don’t want to think of those days.

I’m going to get rid of my dad’s books. He has some quality stuff, but I wouldn’t want to touch his books. I don’t want to think about urine and mucus when I hold a book. Every time I read one of those books, I would think about the hygiene problems that caused my family so much suffering and made us all feel violated. Also, a lot of his books are about history. I’m never going to read that. Even if I change my mind, I won’t want his books. If I want to read history, I’ll buy my own books.

My dad used to have a book rack on top of his toilet. Enough said about that.

I’m out of here. I’m off to the barber shop, AKA the Testosterone Lounge. Hopefully everyone will be comparing carry pieces and talking smack about Hillary Clinton.