SHREDDER TROUBLE

If you think shredding stuff was clear sailing once my Mom's unvoiced concerns were ignored, you are mistaken. There is more than just one soul in this family that has trouble throwing things away. My Dad's issue is keeping record. He once explained to me that it obviously is a thing that affects men more than women and gets worse the older you become. He has kept a journal most of his live. 2 lines every day was sufficient for him. The stuff he records? The weather, his weight, what he ate. The last category was added more recently.

Now here is an example to show you how far he takes his record keeping. He has a plum tree in the garden that he loves dearly. When he added a garage to the house the tree was in the way. Someone else might have just cut it down, but my Dad dug it up, had it pulled down by a farmer friend with his tractor, and had about 10 men over that helped him carry the tree to the front of the property where he had dug a hole for it. It wasn't a small tree. It was at least 12-15 feet high. Yes, he cut back a lot to transfer it. The tree still is in it's "new spot". I vividly remeber that day altough I was only 5 years old. But I disgress. My Dad loves that tree. It usually bears a lot of fruit every second year. For reasons only known to my Dad he wants to know how many plums he eats off the tree every year. So he has a bucket into which he throws the stones after he has eaten a plum. Rumors about a raging fit when my Mom tossed the content of the bucket before he was able to count it one year are most likely true.

So here I am happily shredding away when the following conversation took place.

Dad:"What kind of documents are you shredding?"

Me:"Bank statments."

Dad:"Whose?"

Me:"Yours."

Dad has a concerned look on his face.

Me:"They are old.Very old."

Dad's look gets a little more concerned.

Me, acting innocent:"Is there a problem?"

Dad getting a little fidgety:"You need to keep some, don't throw them all away."

I happily handed some over while I kept shredding like mad. I handed over even more to give the appearance that I was not determined to destroy them all. I made sure to get him one that I thought would be interesting. All of a sudden I realized that it wasn't his bank statement but my Mom's. So I did hand over some other financial statement with his name on it, just to keep him happy. Once he secured stuff for the records to  be placed in a museum one day he was just fine and ignored my shredding. Problem solved. I'm an expert. Can you tell?

Oh, and by the way. Today's shredded statements where from nineteenseventyone. YUP.1971.