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Thirty-Seven Things I Have Found While Looking for my Car’s Proof-of-Insurance Which are not the Form in Question

Some of these items weren’t technically “missing,” as I had a vague sense of where they were, but I found them nonetheless.

  1. Passport
  2. Contact lens case
  3. Coupon for a free haircut
  4. Ball of ticky-tack
  5. Smashed highlighter
  6. Bug spray
  7. Tax paperwork from 2003
  8. Harry Potter DVD (one of the two DVDs I own)
  9. Sixteen cents
  10. To-do list from July
  11. Many, many pay stubs
  12. Prescription for Paxil, unfilled
  13. Hole punch
  14. Sinterklaas wrapping paper
  15. Extra camcorder tape
  16. Old debit card
  17. Velcro tabs
  18. Pair of pliers
  19. Miniature bottle of salad dressing
  20. Sam’s harness
  21. EKG printout from 2004
  22. Chapstick
  23. Tape measure
  24. English Grammar for Students of Latin
  25. Valentine’s Day card
  26. Dry erase markers
  27. Extra key to my car
  28. Cell phone headset
  29. Mathematical Association of America membership form
  30. Two necklaces, two bracelets, and three earrings I’d been looking for
  31. Electrical tape
  32. Two boxes of dental floss
  33. Fifty empty CD cases
  34. iPod sleeve, pre-chewed
  35. HBU student ID
  36. Little book I used to keep the insurance card in
  37. Insurance card, expired May 2006

I think it’s funny that I can date whole piles of clutter from only a few items. Name tag from work, old apartment key, handwritten draft of an email? March 2006. Crossword puzzle, note from Mom, chocolate bar wrapper? October 2004. Stack of recipes, appointment card from shrink, multi-page rambly monologue about how I’d accomplished nothing at the office that day and was only pretending to work until I could go home and bury my face in the carpet? June 2005. I imagine this is why people scrapbook*.

———
* I don’t, but I wish I did, and I’ve often thought of making one (or several). I’m not interested in the froo-froo kind some folks make with stickers and rickrack and photos cut into whimsical shapes; I just want a place to capture a bit of representative detritus of my daily life. It’s so easy to forget the little things, you know? (Sappy sappy, yes.)

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4 Responses to “Thirty-Seven Things I Have Found While Looking for my Car’s Proof-of-Insurance Which are not the Form in Question”

  1. Jay Says:
    October 28th, 2006 at 12:17 am

    so, the tax law clerk in me wants to know if you filed that 2003 return from the paperwork? cuz .. i guess that’s how people ‘forget’ to file for 5 or 6 consecutive years and suddenly wonder why the IRS is pissed at them and asking for those 5 yrs of tax plus somewhere between 20 and 50% interest compounded daily.

  2. Natalie Says:
    October 28th, 2006 at 12:49 am

    No, I don’t think I filed a tax return in 2003, as the only income I had was the interest on my savings account. (That was the paperwork I found.) It came out to about eighteen dollars, if I remember correctly. =)

  3. Jay Says:
    October 28th, 2006 at 5:56 pm

    $18 in interest on a savings account?! At Which Bank?!?! Either u had a shit-ton of money in the account or they paid some astronomical interest rates. and since students dont have shit tonnes of money ;-)

  4. Natalie Says:
    October 28th, 2006 at 7:14 pm

    Fine, make me look it up…

    Okay, the exact figure is $21.38. No, I didn’t have a shit-ton of money in there—maybe a thousand dollars. It’s a credit union, if that makes a difference, and iirc, the interest rate was two or three percent.

    I didn’t think it was that strange…twenty bucks in a year? Doesn’t seem outlandish to me.

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