People coming home ask me why I still keep most of my junk, and I tell them of the same conversation I had with my car. “Where’s the car?” they ask, and I tell them about the talk we had:

 “Garages!” said my car that day, “are meant for cars but look inside your garage, the whole of last night I was cramped against that silly cot which went on sliding onto me.”

 “That’s my old baby cot,” I said stubbornly.

 “And what is it doing in my garage?” asked the car, “waiting for your second childhood? Well I don’t think it need wait any longer, you’re already into it master and you may as well take it upstairs into your bedroom! Oh how cute you’d look in it. Would you like a plastic doll hanging over you master? Or maybe a little duck?”

 “That’s enough,” I said sternly.

 “Oh no it isn’t,” said my car, “there’s more I have to say. Why do you have to keep those two steel cupboards in the garage?”

 “Because there’s no place upstairs dammit!” I shouted.

 “So why should it be in my garage?”

 “Where else?” I asked exasperatedly.

 “In the garbage dump!” said my car.

 “Do you know what is inside?” I asked.

 “Do you?” asked my car, “in the last five years they’ve been inside, I haven’t seen you opening it even once!”

 “I will,” I said, “once I get some time.

“Meanwhile they steal my place! And what about those old paint tins?”

 “What about them?” I asked.

 “They smell master. Do you know what it is to try and sleep with paint and turpentine fumes? And that junk near the wall.”

 “What junk?” I asked, “that’s my scooter.”

 “And when pray sir, did you last ride your beloved scooty?”

 “That bike has many precious memories,” I said.

 “In that case why don’t you keep those memories in your bedroom master, instead of crowding me with them? You know what I think?”

 “What?” I asked.

 “You should have a sale!”

 “A sale,” I said slowly staring at my car.

 “Get rid of all your junk once and for all and allow me the space I deserve,” shouted my car excitedly, “to be able to stretch my wheels and open my doors without touching leftovers, scrap and nostalgic remnants of rubbish!”

 “Okay,” I said as I sat on the floor and wrote on a placard.

 “Master!” shouted my car, as it read what I had written, “what are you writing?”

 “Sale!” I wrote, “of too talkative a car..!”  

I look affectionately at my baby cot, old scooter and steel cupboards and they smile at me as I sold the car. We all love our junk don't we?

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