By ANGEL KANE
Wilson Living Magazine

So the call came in about 8:30 Tuesday morning. Our storage unit had been broken into.

When Brody called me from the unit, I could hear the anger in his voice.

“Nothing is missing! They took nothing! Do you believe that? But they broke my $20.00 lock. That just ticks me off!”

“Are you sure? Everything is there? My two sofas are there? My brown velvet pillows, my glass end table with the scratch, the set of plates I had in college, what about my Santa painting?”

“It’s all here. Even the thieves don’t want your stuff!” (Still angry)

My stuff has been a source of contention for many years. It’s not that I am a hoarder, by any means. It’s more like I’m a collector of...stuff.

I collect big stuff, little stuff, important paper stuff, I just have a lot of stuff!

It really wouldn’t be a problem if I lived in a 10,000 square foot home, but about a year ago, even I couldn’t handle all my stuff and so I started selling things on Craigslist.

Well, “sell” might be a little too optimistic. I “listed” things on Craigslist.

When it came to pricing, I may have been a tad over-confident. Or as Becky said “Are you kidding? That’s more than you paid for it!”

But I was parting with things of value, of quality, and I wasn’t about to let just anybody get their grubby hands on my stuff!

So since Plan A was a miserable failure, Plan B consisted of the storage unit.

Becky couldn’t contain her laughter. “Ha! What does that say about you when even thieves don’t want your stuff! They probably broke in thinking there was a four wheeler or your grandmother’s set of silver only to find that college sofa you’ve been moving around for 20 years and those crazy eyed Easter bunny paintings your kids made two years ago. 

“Shut up! That’s a Bernhardt sofa. I told you, all it needs is recovering!!” (Man, she knows how to push my buttons.)

But it was rather perplexing...

A young man, in the dead of night, scoured the fence of the storage facility, with a pair of metal cutters in one hand and a flash light in the other. His heart was racing, but times were tough and this was a last, desperate move to feed his family. Of all the units he could have chosen, he chose mine and gambled his liberty, his freedom, his hopes and dreams on what lay behind those garage doors.

All that stood in his way…was Brody’s $20.00 lock.

He looked from left to right, coast was clear, with sweaty palms and trembling hands, he broke through the lock (easily), by now he was breathing fast, beads of sweat broke from his forehead, as fast as could he pushed up the door …only to find…20 years of my life, right before his eyes.

There were my 10 Longaberger baskets (seriously, $60.00 for a basket?? what was I thinking?), my Pampered Chef years (I don’t even cook!), my Tupperware years (much less have leftovers), my Creative Memories years (the only album I ever finished belonged to my first-born, which I’m sure will come up in therapy one day), my 80’s cassettes and my jam box (good times!!), and my ceramic cow and chicken rooster collection (my 6 month country phase and 6 months of my life that I’ll never get back!).

And this young man, this criminal, this little twit from the underbelly of society...basically took one look at my life and decided -- to take a pass!

So this morning, I’ve been back on Craigslist, drastically reducing prices and trying to be more reasonable. But seriously, how do you put a price on monkey figurines – three of them?