Aliens visit you and tell you you’re too materialistic. They can’t be argued with, so don’t even try. You’re issued with a standard shoebox (say, 12 by 8 by 6 inches) and told you can keep anything you like out of your stuff, as long as you can fit it in the box. Everything else will be auctioned in aid of Save The Alien Whaleoids.
No arguments, or else they let you keep nothing, and cut off your ass cheeks to use as earwarmers. Well, the equivalent of ears.
Obviously you can’t keep anything that’s too big for the box. Pets are exempt, so don’t worry about that.
Can I re-accumulate possessions again afterwards? I’d want to take the hard drives out of my computers (or at least burn the really important stuff to CDs), but that won’t do me much good if I don’t have a computer to put them back into.
What about a home, or the clothes on one’s back? If you live in Hawaii, you might be able to fit a full set of clothes or two into a shoebox, but around here, you’d freeze to death.
And how big is a bank account? It doesn’t even make sense to me to ask whether that fits in a shoebox.
I already don’t care what I keep. I gave up on holding onto stuff when I got seriously ill. None of it really matters to me. The only thing I want is a computer with internet access, and that won’t fit in a shoe box.
Photos, my great-grandmother’s diamond, and I’d also try to cram in my grandmother’s cooking pots that were handed down to me. And my computer’s hard drive, if I could figure out how to get it out (I’m ignorant about stuff like that).
I’d digitize my entire music & video collection into several terabytes of memory sticks, along with my favorite Kindle books, private journals, and letters & photographs from family and loved ones. Plus, my favorite teddy bear, a Rubik’s Cube (to show the aliens how nutty our species has become) and an inflatable pillow for the long, long flight.
My iPhone would be the first thing in. After that it gets tricky I don’t have many things that are irreplaceable and none of them would fit in a shoebox. I guess I’d add in the knife set that I got for christmas and then some photos that I have laying around the house.
Nobody said they were taking you anywhere. They are just forcing you to comply with their wishes, because they feel themselves more able to judge what is proper for you. The typical explorer mindset about the aboriginals don’t you know. Notice the money is going back to their home world.
I’d fill the box with flash drives of all of my music and data, and a copy of my home-owners insurance, which would cover the replacement value of all of the stuff I’d lose.
Note to self: steal Bozo’s shoe box.
I could cram in a few items (jewelery, including the black lake pearls DH gave me and which my DD is already waiting on me to die to inherit :p, photos/negatives, floppy discs, precious rocks/totems, not a hell of a lot else) but so many of the THINGS I treasure are far too large to fit into such a box.
Paintings I or my kids or late DH did, my grandmother’s quilts, other objects (like the thin plate of metal my late DH burned the image of his hand on and which makes this awesome sound when fluctuated back and forth, the walking sticks/staffs/big sticks we collected and used over the years, etc…)
I’m not esp. materialistic; FUCK the thousands of books and CD and DVDs and electronics and furniture and all the other nice shit I have collected over the years…I could give a shit if push comes to shove. I have, in fact, gotten rid of or lost virtually ALL my possessions several times in my life and survived. (OK, there are a few books I would really try to cram into that shoebox, including the copy of the Rubiat which belonged to my late uncle, from which he read to me when I was little, and which my grandmother inscribed to me after he died when I was 11).
But by the time I was 25 or 30, the important, emotionally significant, irreplacable STUFF of my life grew beyond what would fit into a fucking shoebox.
Fucking Alien Overlords. :mad: We all agree they are total DICKS, right?
Seems easy enough. Most of it would be photos pulled from various albums, which would take up a negligible amount of space, blood pressure meds, also taking up minimal space, iPod, and perhaps one of my antique handguns for sentimental reasons. That’s pretty much all I need.
I remember evacuating our house when the wild fires came through in 2003 and again in 2007. It was amazing how little I took. It all fit in my trunk. I spent most of the time carefully taking photos of everything I left behind so that it would settle any arguments with the insurance company about what had been there.
I guess I should have added my own answer. I would go for:
[ul]
[li]My favourite fork (seriously - I’ve eaten every meal for the last 25+ years at home using my 1970s NAAFI fork, which is beautiful - I have never seen its equal)[/li][li]My netbook - it will fit in the box, on the slant (and charger, I guess)[/li][li]My portable hard drives full of photos[/li][li]My two remaining cherished childhood toys (a blue Tonka Land Rover and my threadbare teddy bear)[/li][/ul]
Don’t fight the hypothetical. There is some circumstance that absolutely and unarguably dictates you may only keep what you can fit in a shoebox. What will you choose?
