Ode to a Grecian paper shredder
2003-08-15 - 10:02 a.m.
IT SLICES, IT DICES, IT MAKES ME FEEL ALIVE!
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I have a new love in my life: paper-shredding.
On Saturday, I bought a Martha Stewart Everyday paper shredder from Kmart for $12.99.
Okay, so it wasn’t really Martha Stewart’s brand. But it is, without question, the best appliance I have ever owned.
I’ve wanted one—needed one— for a long time, but I’ve held off buying one for a very specific and meaningful reason, which had nothing to do with price or place-to-purchase.
I held off because of a comment I read in a Rolling Stone article probably two years ago. It was in a day-in-the-life-of-an-average-10-year-old-boy feature written by Jancee Dunn, (who was surely “inspired by” Susan Orlean’s article “The American Man at Age Ten” from The New Yorker a decade ago.) The comment I’m referring to was in a pull quote:
“[Whatever the little boy’s name was] thinks society, at large, is getting lazier. ‘Why do people need to buy paper shredders?’ he said. ‘All they need is a pair of scissors.’”
Why I have been unable to forget the words of this little suburban brat, but altogether forget quotes by minimalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau—quotes I am paying $10,000 in loans to have learned in college—I will never understand.
But since I read that article, (and since I started to get bombarded by junk mail), I have taken an hour out of every Tuesday night, trash-to-the-curb night, to destroy my mail the manual way. I sit on the floor with a pair of scissors and cut up the telephone-bill statements and unbidden credit card applications that list my social security number and name and address and telephone number three times per page.
I cut out the places on the back where my full name and address appear. I cut out the areas near the top left where it always says “Dear” and a computer has entered my name. The result is artistic, in the kindergarten sense: my statements now are snowflakes.
Once they are nameless and numberless, I toss them into the recycle bin. But they are exponentially multiplying beings, like roaches: toss one, receive five more the next day. I can’t keep up with my cutting project, and yet I can’t just toss them in the trash as they are—I am terrified that someone will steal my identity. Especially since I don’t quite have a grasp on it myself.
I break down in Kmart and purchase the shredder.
“Fuck that 10-year-old kid,” I think. “People who work for a living don’t have time to sit down and cut up their mail. He doesn’t have a sink full of dirty dishes. He doesn’t have to iron his pants in the morning. And what the fuck does a fourth grader know about society, anyway?”
On the way home from Kmart, I am giddy, anxious to plug in the shredder and get started on the ankle-high pile of papers and ATM receipts I have been saving up—or rather, neglecting from taking the time to cut—for the last two months.
The giddiness is not for nothing. I insert my Kmart receipt into the thin-lipped mouth of the shredder, and it emits a loud, revved-up sound that sends a not unpleasant shiver down my spine.
That sound, and the site of the solid paper turning into even strips—reminding me of that Play-Doh Spaghetti Factory I coveted my entire childhood—gives me a sense of satisfaction that I know is unhealthy, kind of like when you pick dead skin off your sunburned shoulders.
After the paper pile is gone, I walk around my apartment looking for things to shred. I am like a 10-year-old country boy with his first bb gun, and every pop can in sight—who cares if it’s full?—is potential target practice.
I spy a Yellowstone postcard from my sister on the floor. “It was a nice gesture,” I think, "but I won’t have any future need for this.”
Zhreeeee.
I find the stub to my car payment.
Zhreeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
A letter from the church in my hometown, reminding me of how much I have(n’t) given in the past year.
Zhreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
This morning when I take the recycling box to the curb, I donate three whole bags of spaghetti-piece paper back to the earth, my identity safely stripped away and under my control. And my heart, like the shredder itself, lets out a loud song—loud enough, almost, for the garbage men to hear.
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The Daily Mail
I was welcomed home from Montana by a hotmail message from none other than Glenn Frye himself.
“Look and Feel Younger!” Glenn said. Good ol’ Glenn. He’s always trying to cheer me up like that, encouraging me to be my personal best.
“How’s it hangin’ for ya, buddy?” I wrote back. “I had a great time in Montana, although I inhaled a lot of forest fire smoke and the place I stayed got evacuated. But enough about me.... You sure do look younger these days, especially since Hell Froze Over for ya. So... what’s new? Me, well, I’ve been doin’ alright, but I’ve been kind of down lately.... I guess I might have what you’d call the smuggler’s blues....Well, I’m off to have a Tequila Sunrise. Take it Easy.”
I also heard from Nannie Mayfield: “Learn to Quit Smoking Now!” I tell you, the woman can never get it through her thick skull. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she doesn’t get out of Dogpatch very often.
“I already did!” I fired back at her. “Where the hell have you been? It’s been a year and five months now. And I really don’t think you have room to talk, considering the CORNCOB PIPE that’s hanging out of your mouth as we speak!”
I also heard from one of my male suitors, who is even more suave than Glenn Frye: Lionel Hooks.
Lionel—who gets called “The Hooker” by the guys at his tanning salon—is always trying to think of subtle ways to flirt with me: “Surfer Girls Wanted!!!!!”
So what if I’ve never been on a surf board, and my skin is the color of snow? I’m officially “hooked.” Any man named Lionel is a man of mine.
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