 | The Saddest Thing I OwnA collection of life's saddest objects, their sad stories, and our reasons for holding onto these sad things. |
Toolbox And Memories
Posted On Sunday May 14, 2006 By SteveSeveral years ago I purchased, at a garage sale around the corner, a toolbox filled with the usual handyman accessories—screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches, tape measure, even a small saw. I don’t do all that much work around the house, but for the next few weeks I used it fairly often, and was a $20 well spent.
A few months later later, the woman who lived at the house (we weren’t really friends, we’d merely nod at one another if we passed, I didn’t know her name) knocked on my door and asked for the tool set. Her marriage had broken up (his doing, she said, sparing me the details), and she was very distraught, as if it happened very recently. I asked her why she wanted me to return the set, and she would only say her husband had been very upset when she sold the tools. She said she would double the price I paid for them. I refused.
A month after that a For Sale was posted in front of her house. Once I drove by and saw her husband walking their kids to his car parked out front. She was at the door, waving.
The house sold pretty quickly (it was during those boom times) and I have no idea what happened to them. I have the tool set, but I don’t use it nearly as much as I probably should.
Tags: garage, handyman, sale, toolbox, tools
Note From Downstairs Neighbor
Posted On Friday April 28, 2006 By Alexandra
I wrote my downstairs neighbor a note when his tv was really loud early one morning. My note said: “Would you please turn your television down in the morning? It is way too loud for 6:48 am.”
He replied by writing the above note to me on the back of my note to him.
I spent the next two years afraid of my downstairs neighbor, and basically put up with all kinds of loud noise at all hours of the day and night. Because I was afraid of him, I covered the hardwood floors in my apartment with carpet (I hate carpet) and worried constantly that he might break into my apartment someday when I wasn’t there and hurt my cat. He seemed crazy enough to do it.
I finally moved. I understand that the people who live above him now actually do purposely make noise to torment him. So he is in a hell of his own making.
But this note still makes me sad, because it reminds me of how frightened a piece of paper with black lines on it can make someone.
Tags: afraid, cat, letter, mean, neighbor, note
Tree
Posted On Friday April 28, 2006 By Tracy
This is the tree that’s outside my building only you’ll have to imagine what it looked like because it died after countless pieces of garbage were thrown on it and several cars “accidentally” ran it over when they were parking.
Some nice person in the neighborhood put signs up saying BE CAREFUL and SAVE ME…then there was a small fence around it and then one day I came out and the tree was lying on its side, broken at the base when a van ran into it (the van was still there).
I find it totally sad and depressing that this defenseless tree that valiantly had pink blossoms every spring, that grew despite the fact that it was planted in the middle of a concrete sidewalk, was killed by the indifference of the people who walked or drove by it – including, I guess, myself since while I didn’t trash it, I didn’t try to save it either.
Tags: bags, blossoms, care, careless, cars, cobble, dead, environment, garbage, missing, paper, people, pink, plants, sidewalk, signs, stones, trash, tree, vans
