The things you don't do, the symbols of who you are.

How many times have you had a strong compulsion to do something you know you had better not do? It happens to me often. I don't know what that says about a person's character, though I am sure there are several different interpretations. I am not one for spending a lot of time doing character dissections, not since my days as a theater major. A brief analysis will reveal that I tend to prefer acting by intuition over thorough scrutiny of the choices. On the big issues, that is. It is the smaller items, I believe, which merit lengthy and pointless deliberation. What kind of pie will it be? Soup, or no soup with the club sandwich? No soup today, Helen. No soup today.

One occasion took place while working with my good friend Scott at the Chicago Tribune printing house. We were installing some a/v equipment in a training room. When we broke for lunch we took what we thought would be a shortcut through the building. An unmarked door lead us to a catwalk that spanned a large room full of the very machines that make the newspaper come alive. And they were alive. Huge blue steel rollers sent an endless sheet of newsprint through a labyrinth of printing and pressing and cutting machinery. The noise was deafening. The scene was astounding. I wanted nothing so much as to throw my Snapple into the works. Scott offered me a dollar to cry out "STOP THE PRESSES!" I had to pause for a moment to compose myself - I very nearly became one dollar richer. Of course we would never have gotten away with it. The consequences would haunt us to this day. Try as we might to escape, crippling laughter would have rendered us unable to run from a stone sow. Reason overcame temptation, and we went to lunch.

It all started when I was little. On a trip to Pentwater, Michigan, sitting on my mom's lap as we drove down the highway in our late 70's green and white Dodge Tradesman 100 van. Yes, I said sitting on mom's lap at highway speeds. Could have been that the seat belt was around me too. Knowing mom that is probably how we rolled, but I was still in the front seat, a blasphemy by today's standards. Sounds crazy, I know, but we thought we were the safe ones. In those days a lot of my friends would literally walk around the moving vehicle while their parents drove. Standing up on the seats, leaning out the windows, and so on. My friend Matthew would sometimes be seen riding on the roof of his mother's Cutlass Sierra, wearing only a Lone Ranger mask and Incredible Hulk Underoos. Society is more cautious about child safety now. Much, much more cautious.

Anyway, there I sat, playing with my dad's new hat. It was a gray/green fedora that included a bit of netting that could be worn over the head and neck to ward off flying insects. Pretty nifty idea. I held this lightweight handful of mesh in my fingers and - here's the part where memory and fact diverge - I rolled down the window and either let the thing go intentionally, or the vacuum from the only open window sucked the thing out of my hand. I don't know the truth. It was one of those two things, and either way the netting was gone for good. Dad was pissed. The hat had suddenly lost a major feature. His neck would pay the price, as it was undoubtedly black fly season in Michigan. We always went during black fly season. I said something about stopping to retrieve the net, but for reasons lost on my six year old mind, that was out of the question. Actually, I still don't get that one.

So did I throw the bug net out the window on purpose? I only ask because as I grew up I often found myself feeling the urge to chuck important objects out the window of a car, off the side of a boat, into a deep chasm, into the polar bear enclosure at the zoo, and so on. It seemed like such a great idea! Any time I was holding something important and in a position to dispose of it permanently, I sincerely felt that the world would be better for it. And yet I have managed to restrain myself these many years. Mostly.

Since the Tradesman-bug net incident I have followed through on a few marked occasions. I threw a ring off a bridge over the Mississippi one day. Just upstream from the I-35 bridge that collapsed last year. The ring was a gift from a girlfriend. I credit the power of the big river on that occasion. It overwhelmed my foolish and romantic sensibilities, and the spirit of the moment took me to a better place. I should have chucked the relationship with the ring, but that lame duck hung around for another year or two. Regardless, I have a fond memory of dispatching that tiny shiny memento with a long wind up, letting it sail for several seconds through the sun of a crisp autumn day until it was almost out of sight, then plopping without a sound into the turbulent and indifferent waters below. On the far shore stood the remnants of an old flour mill, roof caved in, silos falling to ruin. The industry driven by the falls at Nicollet had long since moved to more profitable locales. I should have read the significance in that picture and taken a likewise course with my life but as I mentioned, I was fool in those days.

I don't count premeditated disposal of baggage on this list. I speak to those moments when chance afforded me the opportunity to do something I could never undo, something that may have far reaching consequences and bear significantly on the remainder of my days. I want to say something here about freeing oneself of an albatross and pay homage to the Ancient Mariner, but the idea of consequence implies the opposite of what I plumb my memories for; actually acquiring this figurative dead bird by the act of removing a significantly endowed object from one's possession. Sort of ironic. The object was supposed to be the albatross. Instead it was the touchstone that kept the burden at bay.

The premeditated cutting loose, on the other hand - that is an act performed by someone seeking to be free. Like the time I went for a solo autumn camp at the Palisades and built a nice big cheery fire and proceeded to throw into it virtually every memento, photo, knick-knack and trinket from my first wedding. There was an amazing catharsis in watching each item transform from bitter memory to meaningless ash. It felt so good. I still have the memory, but the physical permanence is gone. The memory is mine to use as I see fit. The red hot embers of that pyre composed themselves to cook me a fine supper that night.

We imbue objects with such great power - let them hold station over our psyches, like a teetering bookshelf full of personal histories. I have a necklace that was once my grandfather's key chain. He carried it on his postal route, and everywhere else he went I suppose, and if he ever lost his keys this little metal tag would insure that the keys find their way back to him. This in the time of good deeds performed without recompense. This little tag is as sacred to me as any artifact in a museum collection, but to anyone else it is a tiny, worthless bit of metal. I take good care of it, but it has served time on the list. I have felt it call, "Hurl me into those falls now." "Drop me in the middle of this great deep lake now." "Out the window with me."

Why didn't I release myself from this piece of matter? I loved my Pipere, still do. To lose the little bit of metal would make me sad. It keeps his memory alive in me, keeps me aware of his influence on my life. I could keep all of that without this talisman. Why choose to carry such things?

For the sake of remembrance. What other reason could there be? I could sit here and write about my Pipere, but in the end this key tag speaks volumes to me. I will carry it on and pass it down, bearing great reverence to what is worthless by any other account. I will pass the albatross to the next generation, and she can find her own understanding of how to endow trivial things with deep meaning. And then be compelled to throw them to the abyss, or show restraint and carry on the symbol of my memory.