Rolling through baggy years
I have reached the baggy years of life. I know this because of a meme I read the other day:
“How to be an adult: Have a bag of cords, a gift bag full of gift bags, a plastic bag full of plastic bags, and bags under your eyes.”
I’ve been bagged.
It’s like someone prowled through my apartment and peeked — but didn’t have the courtesy to steal even one bag of plugs, cords, cables, chargers and adapters that don’t fit anything I own anymore but I keep because — say it with me — I might need that one day.
I’m thinking of braiding the wads of power cords, phone lines and TV cables into a second-floor fire escape rope — or maybe into a macrame hanging basket.
Sure, keeping cords on the chance that technology will suddenly reverse to the days of 8-tracks and VHS tapes may sound a little unnecessary (or silly), but lay off my bags of gift bags. The gift bags stashed in my closet DO come in handy.
I’m not the guy making emergency runs to the all-night convenience store on Dec. 24 — unless I forgot to buy presents to go inside the gift bags I’ve been saving since 1982.
Nor have I had to buy very many trash bags, not with all the plastic bags that come home with me every time I buy boxes of Cap’n Crunch or a batch of comic books.
Plastic bags come in handy around the house. Besides just holding all the other bags, plastic bags are great when your kitchen junk drawer and your desk drawer become so jammed that they refuse to close even with a hip bump. Simply sweep the top layer of junk into a plastic bag, knot it and toss it into a junk corner. Now that it’s leveled off, the junk drawer will close again.
A junk drawer is just a sturdy bag for people who don’t already have bags.
(Last week I saw an ad that I hope is a joke — a junk drawer starter kit. It’s a box full of items like twist ties from bread wrappers, broken pencils, miscellaneous paper clips, random receipts, a couple of erasers, ink pens that are out of ink, a flashlight without batteries and a shopping list from 2017.
If you’re not the kind of person who knows where your 9-volt batteries are without pawing through your junk drawer, then we can’t be friends. I break out in hives around people without bags of stuff and without drawers full of whatzits and whozits and why-did-I-keep-this-oh-well-back-in-the-junk-drawer-with-you. I’ll erase your name from my address book. It’s right here in my junk drawer. Somewhere.)
The weird thing is that bags have a habit of multiplying. Even when I pack canvas totes and zippered freezer bags to the store with me, I seem to find seven times as many plastic bags in my home than I possibly could have carted in by myself.
I just threw out a bulging plastic bag that I’d stuffed full of other plastic bags like dressing crammed inside an obese turkey. The next bagful of plastic already is under construction. Recycling bins groan when they see me coming.
The older I get, the more the bagginess takes over my life. First, it was bags under the eyes. Then, saggy bagginess replaces the various parts of my body that used to be tight and toned.
Now, I’m replacing my whole wardrobe with baggy shirts and baggy pants. I need clothes that reflect my comfortable shift into what I believe is called a “granddad bod.”
You know, I put on my baggy pants just like every other person — hopping on one leg while aiming for the nearest piece of furniture before I tumble over.
Which reminds me, I also have a bag of cotton balls, a bag of creams and ointments and a bag of various size bandages.
Oops, I’m out of space. That’s another column in the bag.
Write Mr. Baggy Pants at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.