Shop 'Til You Drop Or “It” Drops On You
Shopaholic spinster found dead under 3 feet of unopened goods
A spinster who obsessively hoarded clothes died in her home after a mountain of suitcases fell on her, burying her alive. The woman, 77, owned 300 scarves as well as thousands of trinkets and valuables.
There's a lesson in this story. Or is it a metaphor? I always get those mixed up. Or am I thinking of a moral? A paradox perhaps? I guess it could be a cautionary tale but I'm pretty sure it's not an analogy. Pretty much any way you slice it, the old gal is with her maker now. That's if there is such a thing as heaven, and my gut feeling tells me that there isn't. I am one hundred percent positive that you can't “take it with you,” as they say. The “it” in this case is all of the crap she had stuffed into her house and garage. Even if there were a heaven, or life after death, or a place where you meet your maker—be it god or Allah or Buddha (is he a god?) or Krisha or whoever you worship—even if there were such a place, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't really need to take your “trinkets” with you, whatever the hell they are. Is there a trinket aisle at Wal-Mart?
So why was this in the paper in the first place? Not in the paper like a newspaper but on a web page, although the web page is from a newspaper, so why? One poor old woman getting buried by her own trinkets doesn't qualify as news, not in my book. She looks a bit like Margaret Thatcher. Now that would be a news story: “Margaret Thatcher, Compulsive Shopper, Buried Under Trinkets!” But it wasn't Margaret Thatcher so it really isn't news unless there is something for readers to gain from it. I suppose that for most people it's just entertainment, like reading about celebrities. You people are really need to find a hobby. The really sad part about this whole story is that if this woman was a compulsive shopper it means she bought all sorts of stuff. I'm thinking that at some time or another she probably bought a shovel which would have come in really handy when all that crap caved in on her. I'm just thinking out loud here but if she did have a shovel but couldn't reach it that would have been really ironic, or malapropos, or apropos (if you can keep those two straight you are smarter than me, or I, I went and opened a whole other can of worms there), or tragic, or whatever. You know what I mean. And it's all kind of like sad but not “boo-hoo” sad. Just the kind of sad you feel for some stranger you read about on the internet. You can't go too overboard on the sadness thing every time you come across a sad story like this.
Come to think of it, there is something to be learned from this. If you are a shopaholic then about every 10th thing you buy—be they trinkets, scarves, or whatever—every once in a while you need to pick up a shovel, you know, just in case. Either that or you need to be equally as obsessive about stacking all of your crap as you are about buying it—maybe more so. Still, I'm not trying to be judgmental about the lady, I'm just saying. I don't think anyone has ever died from being too organized. So there is the lesson for you: Get organized before you find yourself buried under a bunch of suitcases with no shovel.
