Baggage

Started my evening looking for something I thought would be so easy to find. As I opened a drawer full of stationary items, they clinked and danced to the swoosh sound of the drawer. As they came to a rest and the dust settled down, I realized there was no way I could find the stuff that I was looking for, in that pile of clutter. I took a deep breath and decided to sort some of it. The first most important thing I found, were external hard disks (HDD – the ones we use to take backups of our computer systems). I discovered we own 4 HDD in total (not sure how many TB of data that adds up to).

Since these are extremely important, I had to find a nice, safe corner to keep these. The drawer in question, was already overflowing so I had to find another place for these cherished items. As I opened the cupboard above, I was surprised to discover more data lined up neatly in two shelves full of CDs. My first thought – when did we buy them; the second thought – I wonder what is in them? The third thought – I don’t have time to go through all these right now, so will have to store them safely somewhere else.

To find a place to store the CDs now, I scanned the series of cupboard doors peeking at me from behind their silver handles, daring me to open them. Each door was brown in colour and identical to the one before. It was extremely challenging to go back memory lane, trying to remember what could I have possibly stored in so many of them. I started hoping I would find some hidden treasures, or even a stack of money, that I might have kept in and forgotten. That would be a good reward for the effort that I was about to put in.

Well, I might as well would have wished for the Moon, because obviously I was not going to find it in those cupboards. What I found instead, which equally surprised me – two full shelves of FLOPPY DISKS! Hmmph was the only sound that came from me and the earlier thought 1,2 and 3 repeated all over again in the maze of my mind. I opened a few more brown doors, found some other amusing stuff and decided reorganizing those had to wait for some more time.

In the end, I rearranged the shelves of floppy disks, stacking them closer, tighter and virtually without air. In the same shelf, in front of the floppies, I squeezed in the CDs, and by the end of an hour long effort I had created for myself, a brand new home for storing the HDDs. By then, I was out of time, energy and most importantly patience to do any more reorganization. Having closed all cupboards and dumping the stationary back from where it originated. I went out to get some fresh air. Of course, by then I had completely forgotten what I had started searching for in the first place.