I remember the call because it was the sort of call that makes me want to scoop my brains out with a spork.
"I found a gold bracelet on the street. What should I do?" he asked.
I won't specify who exactly "he" is since "he" doesn't like it when I talk about him in this space, so let's just call him The King of All Hoarders for now, mmkay?
So the King of All Hoarders found a bracelet in the middle of the street while walking around downtown and didn't know what to do with it. He wanted to return it to its rightful owner, but how do you do that in a busy urban area? I thought my solution was the best possible one.
"Are there any garbage cans near by? Just throw it in one."
I was serious. Based on his description, the bracelet had been worn by Vanilla Ice's mom back in 1989 and it needed to stay there. In 1989. The King of All Hoarders would be doing the owner a favor by making sure he or she never wore it again.
Of course, The King of All Hoarders didn't earn his name by throwing things in the garbage. Nooooooooo. Instead, the King of All Hoarders took that bracelet home and stashed it in one of his 22,690,426,824,624 hiding places.
And there it sat, safely surrounded by cash receipts for coffee and straw wrappers and random pieces of plastic that must belong somewhere so lets just keep them to be safe, y'know? TEN YEARS WENT BY, so obviously that bracelet was in a very safe place. If it weren't, I would have found it and thrown it away. That's what I do, after all. I wage wars against the hoarding.
I don't know what made him think of the bracelet last week. He was on vacation and just hanging out around the house because he has days he needs to burn. Apparently that made him think of all of the things he's been meaning to do for the past decade? Maybe? Regardless, for some reason he set eyes on that bracelet last week and suddenly had an urge to do something with it.
I fielded a bunch of phone calls about the whole thing. He asked if he should try to go sell it and I said, and I'm quoting myself exactly, "Go ahead. You won't get much, but at least it will be out of the house."
My "You won't get much," was based on a vague memory of what the bracelet looked like. It was 14K gold, but it was junk. Hideous, out-dated, ugly junk.
The last call about the bracelet came while The King of All Hoarders stood inside one of those stores that buys and sells gold. He didn't go to a pawn shop because he wasn't sure where to find one, but for reasons unknown, he knew where the gold shop was hidden. He stood in that store with his phone in his hand and he said, "Three Seventy-Eight."
"Have fun buying a gallon of gas with that," I replied. It's good always being the one who is right.
"No," he said. "Three HUNDRED and seventy-eight dollars," he clarified.
I was stunned silent. For a long time. Actually, I still don't have words to describe what I was thinking at that moment. I know that those words are full of conflict. Like, "YAY! Unexpected money!" but more so "Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
You guys, the last thing anyone should do is reward a hoarder for their hoarding. Now the King of All Hoarders will remind me of that damn bracelet every time I go through a box and try to get him to part ways with some useless piece of junk. "But, remember the bracelet? This might be worth money some day!"
I can already hear the words. I want to murder the words. With a spork.
I'll go buy myself a good one with the money he got from the bracelet.
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