One Woman's Journey Through Her Junk Drawer

Most humans on planet Earth have at least one junk drawer, and if you're anything like me, more than one. Often times, junk drawers are full of things you need, but don't have specific places for, like scissors and chip clips, but what about the drawer full of stuff that you don't need, the stuff that holds no practical purpose besides the fact that you just can't let go? That's the journey I'm taking you on today.

Exploring: the top drawer of this beautiful wooden chest purchased from an antique store in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Supposedly, it was found in an old mansion. I hope it's haunted. Objects can be haunted.

Discoveries:

- I'm starting with the most important: a bow from my favorite shirt in 5th grade, which got spaghetti on it and fell off. 5th grade was fun. It was right before everything went to hell. I can never get rid of this.

- A million letters, mostly from my friend Beth, filled with every little thing that happened in our lives. We wrote each other wonderfully pointless and long winded letters for years, and we need to start this up again.

- Two tickets from separate American Idol concerts. At one, I almost died.

- The ticket from when I saw Conan live in Chicago. Almost died from love.

- Physical therapy exercises, which I never always do.

- Old Christmas cards. My favorite comes from my friends Anne and Matt, who win at everything.

Art.

- A letter to me written by Mom's friend when I was first born. She tells me I'm precious. She tells me I kicked a nurse and then clenched my fist "ever so slowly." Mom isn't friends with this lady anymore.

- This PSA

- A million buttons that I will never sew on my shirts once a button actually falls off.

- A scrap of paper where I wrote "Tennyson & Keiser- Maur." Here I am, finally listening to it again years later, thanks to my note. The song isn't by itself on YouTube, but someone made it the background of a Rockefeller Christmas Tree video, so listen to it while you read the rest of this, or something.

 -Broccoli and Cheese Man cast photo. I need to talk about this for a minute.

Yes, Dad is wearing a pompom on his head.

I think I've mentioned this before, but when I was about nine, I became really obsessed with Barney. One day, while my friend Chelsea and I played with sidewalk chalk, we created a character called Brocooli and Cheese Man, a man just like Barney the dinosaur, except he was not a dinosaur, but a man made from broccoli and cheese. I'm not sure what his purpose was. I'm guessing to help kids be healthy? He was magical.

Feeding farm animals

The summer before fourth grade, I got it in my head that I needed to write a script and shoot an episode of Broccoli and Cheese Man. My long-suffering father was the star. I had selected specific friends for specific roles, and they were all game. Unfortunetly, our video camera broke, so we decided to take pictures and have it be a picture book. There's a segment where we got in the pool, but it was raining, so Mom took the pictures from inside, and most are just of the window screen. But then we danced and fed farm animals, which is unfortunately fortunetly preserved.

Every now and then, I come across one of these pictures, and they're so horrifyingly embarrassing that it's like, how can I NOT put them on the internet? (Yes, there are more. No, I could not find them.)

Back to the list:

-A Puffalump Keepsake book, recorded by Mom. Proof that I was always real creative.

- For a time, big sister Liz, cousin Natalie, and I pretended like we were news reporters. Here's several gruesome fake news reports NOT written by me, thank you very much.

-A children's book, The Freshest Milk, the Smoothest Smoothy, written by Abigail Alena Bishop Lavine. I had a very rich imaginary life with my dolls, as I've documented here, and this book was about my doll son. Things to note on the author page: I make sure to say my three year old lives with her father. "Book marm" is one of my jobs.

- A doodle from summer '97 involving a story line from Days of Our Lives that Natalie, Liz, and I found hilarious. Can't get rid of this.

- A flyer from when Michelle Obama came to visit Las Vegas in 2008. I walked my class downtown to see her instead of teaching, because even though Dr. Kempner said it wasn't okay, Dr. Middleton said it was. ("This is HISTORY!") Obama paper dolls are in the desk, too.

-Envelopes containing predictions my friends and I made for ourselves and each other in 2008 to be opened in 2012. They depress me greatly. There's another envelope with new predictions for 2016, which I accidentally glanced at, and already I'm depressed again.

- Note from Dad, addressed to "clever, magical Brigette" from "logical and wise Wolf Pop." This was either attached to a fairy statue or my cat tarot deck he gave me for Christmas-- don't remember.

-Aura pictures, palm reader notes, and personality tests. How would I know who I am without all this data? I need to talk about this for a minute. I repeat myself a lot in this thing, but I don't think I've ever really touched on my family's obsession with the supernatural. It's honestly odd that I haven't.

There's too much to say about all of that, but the palm reader experience stands out in my family's supernatural journey. We walked into this lady's house thinking we were gonna get swindled and quickly realized we were wrong. The readings were so accurate that one of us would often say "oh no, I don't think that's true," and everyone else would look at each other and mouth "yes it is!" She knew about things that happened to us at certain ages, told us stuff about our health, and different struggles with our personalities. She told me I was Neptunean, that I was not of this earth and just didn't belong here. Accurate.

The thing that's striking about palm reading is that it's a science. There is no psychic stuff going on, no channeling. The reader herself said she had no supernatural abilities. YOU could be a palm reader. And so could YOU! And so could YOU!

Did you know that the points in your hands have to do with the planets? And that you can also read people's irises, but we don't do that in America much, and the irises look like the universe? And have I ever showed you this HD picture of orbs I took at a grave yard years ago that also look like the universe? Ghosts collect in a parallel universe and the universe is in your hands and eyes. The planets are in cahoots with your personality and your life and this is actually something you can MEASURE! IT'S SCIENCE!

Anyway, what's happening? There's stuff in my junk drawer?

-Okay, one more item, my grad school ID. My face is almost completely rubbed away. When I pulled this item out, I actually paused and recoiled. It's is absolutely terrifying. I mean *I* must be the ghost who haunts my wooden chest, right? Okay enough with the ghost stuff. ENOUGH! I'm shutting this whole thing down!

~WHAT I'VE LEARNED~ 

The stuff we save for no reason is to preserve memories of relationships-- relationships with other people, and our relationship with ourselves, different parts of ourselves from different times. It's all about full integration. We go about our daily lives and have our jobs and our titles, or lack there of, all the while trying subconcousily to hold together a narrative about ourselves, and the junk drawer symbolizes that part in our brain where memory holds love and identity and security and consistency. Did that sound smart? I literally just wrote without stopping like a stream of concousiness. I have no idea what I'm saying.

~YOUR TURN~

Take the Junk Drawer Challenge! Find a drawer full of impractical things and tell me what's in it. How far back do these items go, and why have you kept ahold of them? What relationship are you trying to preserve? What would you lose if you actually were to throw the thing away?

OR dump the entire drawer on your head, put it on social media, and then challenge a friend to do the same thing and donate money to a disease! Definetly do one of those two things, and as always, let me know how it goes!