By Sean Sullivan Lagniappe columnist

Toys in the attic or bats in the belfry?

We humans started this civilization thing as nomads, following the herds of game we hunted and also moving away from areas that were dense with predators that had the fever for the flavor of a people.

As time wore on, as time is want to do when you are dragging your Neolithic ass all around Eurasia, humans began to stay in areas longer than the critters they were hunting did and through basic agriculture and gathering supplemented by hunting forays man began to establish settlements, permanent shelters and civilization.

You may be asking yourself, “Why has Sullivan gone all Quest for Fire on us all of a sudden”? It is because I got the call this weekend.

Before I explain the call, understand that when man forsook the nomadic existence he leapt forward into a world of being able to keep more stuff than he could carry. First in the shift to civilization and an agrarian based existence man built basic accommodations, stick huts, lean to’s and remodeled caves and that let people accumulate more stuff like collectable Mastodon tusk artwork, a few extra bear hides, a piece of flint shaped like a naked woman and even some decorative spears to break out when important company dropped by.

Eventually someone was digging around their cave and realized that there was another smaller, hotter and stuffier cave right above the one they lived in and presto-magico the first attic.

So I get the call from my parents this the call you know is inevitable but you choose not to think about until good morning sunshine there it is on the other end of the cordless phone it is real, unavoidable and as old as civilization; I think mine sounded like this …”Sean it’s Mom; Dad and I started cleaning out the attic this weekend and we need you over here now to get your stuff.”

With that call my years of forfeited terror were all due in full. I moved out and went to college when I was 17 and other than a two-month stay in the mid nineties I have been out of my parent’s house ever since and I’m now 36. My parents have lived in the same house since 1980 and in a month or two they are moving to a new house and have begun the process of panning out the attic gold from the stored dirt. It is odd how things we find important enough to box up and put away at one point in time are not given a seconds’ thought on their way to the trash bin years later.

Someone who comes from a non-sentimental family of Spartans might not understand my terror at being called home to get my stuff out of the attic but those of you who come from pack, preserve and retain lineage like I do most likely understand my worry.

The first problem with sorting out the flotsam and jetsam of an attic is that it takes place in an attic. With the exception of Hitler’s suite in Hell or the insides of Dom Delouise’s thighs during a fifty-yard dash there is nowhere hotter than an attic in the South in August. Just touching the attic door tells you enough about the inferno that awaits you on the other side, complete with bad lighting concussion-inducing cross-beams, 30-year-old dust and pink fiberglass insulation shards sure to make you itch like someone with a case of the hives that decided to roll around in a pile of poison ivy vines.

The person from the Spartan family might think an attic-cleaning day, or in our case month, would be a simple affair, grab a couple of items and be done. In my world the attic is full, full of hundreds of un-labeled Gayfers boxes each holding untold piles of crap. This crap, which must have seemed like a must have keepsake at the time it was stowed, usually has a ten percent retention rate at best.

It seems like my baby stuff was best represented in the inventory of “things that were mine that I had to come get out of the attic”. It must be something in the Mama hormones that causes them to keep everything their baby has touched.

I sorted through the stuff Mom had saved for me all these years, normal things like cribs and mobiles and from there on to things not so normal like baby’s first potty. Not the actual discharge but the plastic low rider toilet that I was potty trained on which was stored all these years in the inferno of my parent’s attic, nice touch Mom.

The majority of things in the parental attic were just delayed garbage from the ‘70s and ‘80s. The heat and discomfort of working in the attic makes you a hanging judge when it comes to deciding whether to keep or trash a “keepsake”.

Even with my harsh hand my pile of things from my parent’s attic started to grow. Now that I have my own family I tricked myself into keeping things because maybe one day my children would want to play with Daddy’s Millennium Falcon or his “Movin’-Out Real Trucker Edition” CB radio kit. After many hours sweating it out amongst dusty boxes I culled out quite an impressive pile of crap to drag back to my house and put in the attic.

And there is the problem. This pile of crap would not be an issue if our nomadic ancestors had not gotten lazy and started growing crops instead of spearing Wooly Mammoths. If that leap in human development had not happened we would never have seen the invention of the attic and I currently would not be dripping wet with sweat from moving 30 years of childhood garbage into my grownup attic. By the way I am trying to let go of my pack rat tendencies and much of the garbage…err…items are on sale right now at ebay.com except for the Millennium Falcon, ‘cause I am sure a future Sullivan will want it so they can put it in their attic.

Sean Sullivan is Lagniappe lagniappe columnist. Contact him at ssullivan@lagniappemobile.com.

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