I have, once again, taken all the stuff out of my attic closet in the hopes that at some future time I will have a nearly empty closet. Yeah, that’s going to happen.

One of the things I have kept, for unknown reasons, is a small box from the Joseph Spiess Company store in Elgin. It was a gift from my best friend at the time, Cindy. I think it either held my POW bracelet or else a gold metal mesh belt ring. Cindy wrote, “That’s a put-on!” on the cover of the box because she purchased the gift somewhere other than Spiess and used the box in which to put the gift. Spiess was an upper-end store — somewhere we certainly didn’t shop, and I guess Cindy’s family didn’t either, very much.

Inside the box now are three apparently random items.

One is a white decapitated ceramic figurine in a dress, holding a basket. I have no idea where it came from or why I kept it in the box. I vaguely recall finding it in the dirt somewhere.

Another item is a one-eyed plastic monkey with a hole in its head which probably once held a tuft of hair. The monkey probably came out of a gumball machine, but I have no recollection about when it.

The third is a spark plug.

The only item I know for sure why I kept was the spark plug. I kept it because my dad used to give me old spark plugs to play with. I guess I liked the combination of ceramic and metal. Or something.

These are going in the trash today. Honestly. Three down and 10,000 things to go.