That's mine!

I park my car on the street outside the house. Last week, under the cover of nighttime, the car was side swiped. The discovery of a half hanging bumper bar and a substantial dent wrought by an anonymous driver was awful, but all I could do was curse and wring my hands. It was not the first time, the back bumper bar had previously been gently grazed (which seems enough these days to strip paintwork from late model cars) and these two incidents have occurred ever since the local council installed a traffic slowing, road narrowing chicane outside my house.

I now park further down the street and await insurance to do its thing. I initially resented the loss of my car park space. Heavens, I'll now have lug groceries from further away and gosh, what'll I do if I'm caught in the rain? People can become possessive of street parking to the point obsession. I used to grizzle when I found someone had taken my spot, the cheek! Aren't drivers telepathic, 'That's my spot'? My neighbour owns a very large orange witch's hat which he places in the parking spot in front of his house when he needs to drive somewhere so as to deter any would be parking spot stealers (despite him having a driveway he prefers to park on the street, but that's another story).

I wonder about our possessiveness of objects and touched on the subject in a previous entry. Like a parking spot, which you do not automatically own because it happens to be directly outside your house, the things we hoard (or cherish) can sometimes be rather irrational.

In my experience and with the parents I have, my sense of possession comes down to the following:

1. A strange sense of entitlement

Akin to:
- street parking outside one's home¹
- the attitude that if it's free then you should take it (e.g. taking all the free stuff in hotel rooms just because they are there and you paid for the room even though you probably don't really need small bottles of shampoo nor tiny sewing kits)²
- not turning in wallets found on the street because you found it and if anyone is silly enough to drop their wallets, then they deserve to suffer the consequences³
- if they have it, why don't I have it? I want it, I want it now!⁴

2. Being sentimental

If we had happy childhoods, or even reasonably pleasant ones, we tend to look fondly upon possessions which remind us of that time, be it photographs, toys, holiday destinations, the family home or movies. Revisiting them either in person or in our minds seems to make us yearn for 'lost moments' in our past and I always wonder whether it indicates a dissatisfaction with the current state of our lives or is simply one of life's joys. I guess if my current life was paralysed by the past, it would be an unhealthy thing. These days, indulging in some daydreams or looking over old photographs to bring back that feeling of childhood seems like a way for me to accumulate stories of people who are no longer with us and I look forward to passing them onto the next generation of my family.

3. Those immigrants!

This is directly related to my parents who came to Australia for opportunities of a better life. They saw poverty, grew accustomed to wasting nothing during their early lives and of not knowing what life will hold for them in the near future. They cannot break the habit because for them, it's not a habit but something that's built into who they turned out to be in this new country. As a consequence, there is so much stuff in the garage of my childhood home. Timber arm rests salvaged from an old couch that could be used someday, though they resemble arm rests and I cannot imagine them being useful for anything other than arm rests, except maybe fire wood. There is an inability to discard things that may be useful in the future. I guess to my parents the term 'handcrafted' was a meaningful term, things were made to last and large purchases were lifelong investments or at least stood the test of decades.
This mentality also extends to shopping and catching the latest bargain which to my mother is the bargain of the century, to be bought in multiple lots as they'll never be repeated again. In this country there are always bargains and despite the current state of world economics, the majority of us live in ludicrous luxury by world standards.

4. Laziness or being disorganised

I am forever wading through bills and newspapers piled in various locations around the house. The things that become accumulated as part of living one's life - the receipts I decided to keep for that frying pan, just in case the frying pan malfunctions, the magazines and liftouts that continue to pile up on shelves because they contain good reference material, that shirt I bought 5 years ago that I last wore 5 years ago because it's been ages since I cleared out my closet.
Thankfully, the carpet is being pulled up soon for floorboards and all possessions need to be moved offsite for 2 weeks. Hoarding will no longer be an option.

¹ Guilty as charged.
² Only if they are super duper shampoos that actually improve my hairdo, which they rarely do.
³ I have never come across a dropped wallet that has not been ransacked.
⁴ Guilty, especially with food others are consuming.