Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.In the garage sale of the mind, the one-eyed man is king by J. G. Fabiano Everyone loves a garage sale. It is a time when we can get rid of all the junk we have accumulated over the past decade or two. It is usually precipitated, either by a spouse demanding that all closets be emptied or the need to have a car actually fit in a garage. But what about one's life? When is it time to run a garage sale to get rid of the many memories that have accumulated over the course of one's life? Summer finally arrived the other day. Spring never showed up because the weather went from a cold and damp 40 degrees to 95 degree heat and humidity. A hot, sunny weekend finally arrived but only after a thunderstorm made everything wet the first morning of the weekend. Knowing I had weeks of work to catch up on, I decided to let my lawn and garden dry out a bit and spend the morning ridding myself of some memories that had begun to clutter up my mind. Sitting in my old, dilapidated beach chair that should have been facing the ocean at this time of the year, I rolled out a lifetime of memories that could finally be sent to the ultimate garage sale. The first memory had to do with my eye. Not a memory, so much as a disability that had been with me my whole life. I was born with one eye not working. It worked a little bit but the shadows and blurred images I could see did not allow me any depth perception, or the excitement of playing a pirate with a black eye patch. I hid this disability for most of my childhood years. In fact, I thought it was normal for people to be able to see clearly out of one eye and not so clearly out of the other. Every time I went to the doctor he asked me how I was seeing. On a couple of occasions I told him I had a tough time seeing out of my right eye. Since both my older sisters had glasses the doctor assumed I wanted to be like them and was making up the story that my right eye didn't work. I think my distrust of doctors started when I was very young. I was finally found out when I was a freshman in high school. In fact, it was my fault they found out. After I made the football team I told my coach I had a difficult time seeing out of the right side of my helmet. Since my position was defensive lineman I was easy prey for anyone blocking from the right. The coach sent me to the nurse who finally sent me to an ophthalmologist who discovered I had little sight in my right eye. He also discovered it couldn't be fixed and I would have to live with it. This was not a major problem because I had been living with it for the first 14 years of my life. Because I had this type of physical disability I was told it was too dangerous for me to play sports. I was not only taken off the football team but also all the teams my high school offered. This devastated me to the point that I lost about 40 pounds and became convinced I was not as good as everyone else. Looking out at my rain soaked lawn I realized I had hung onto this useless thought for most of my life. Even though I had always tried to show that I could do anything I wanted I was still nagged by the fact I had one eye that did not work. On this day I decided to finally get rid of that thought and concentrate instead on the fact that I had an eye that worked really well. The ultimate garage sale had just released a part of my history I no longer wanted.Except that it also brought back another memory. A memory that sent shivers up and down my spine. I remembered, many years ago, tending my garden by pulling up any weeds that dared to encroach around my tomato and pepper plants. Seeing an especially ugly crabgrass weed I reached down to pick it up and was jolted by a sudden shock to my left eye, my good eye. It seemed as I was reaching down to pull out the crabgrass I had bumped into a stake holding up a pepper plant. The only thing that stopped that garden stake impaling my left eye was the fact that I was wearing sunglasses at the time. This might have explained why I didn’t see the top of the vegetable stake. I remember shaking the rest of the day, knowing my life would have been drastically changed for the worse if I had not been wearing glasses. That thought has haunted me for the past 10 years of my life. Sitting in my dilapidated old beach chair on this sunny Saturday morning I decided to send that memory out to the garage sale too and accept that fate had been kind to me and granted me the gift of hindsight. The next memory that popped into my mind had to do with my academic career. I was always a good student at high school. Well, actually, I was never that great a student: I just thought I was because I did not have to work as hard to get A's. Unfortunately for me I continued this attitude into my College years and that was when I discovered that a good reputation in high school counted for nothing in College. The A's that had come so easily before turned into C's and I did not come to the realization until the end of my four years in College that the amount of work I put in would always equate to the success I could pull out. In other words, I allowed myself to become an average student. Average is a term I have always hated. I would rather be terrible or terrific but I hate the idea of being average. To this day I have lived with the idea that I could have been anything I wanted to be if I had studied more and played less. I have spent most of my life living with the thought that, if I could have done it all over again, maybe I could have become the doctor my parents told me I had the potential to be. Unfulfilled potential is a heavy burden for anybody to carry through their lives. Watching the wet grass steam under the ferocious heat of the sun I decided this was another thought that could into the garage sale of my mind. It was time I started to feel good about what I had become, about who I was. Looking up at my beautiful home in York and thinking about my beautiful family I decided at that minute to get rid of the 'shoulda-woulda' mentality and place all the thoughts that went with it in the ultimate garage sale for somebody else to think about. Many thoughts went through my mind that morning. I sat there for more than three hours, long after I should have been mowing the lawn and tending the garden. Memories of past business experiences were thrown out for sale. Mistakes made were remembered; their lessons recorded and brought out to the front lawn for somebody else to experience. I no longer needed them. I think I opened my mind up a bit on that Saturday morning. I would now be able to drive into my garage without having to worry about hitting a memory I no longer needed. I would also have room in the closet of my life to put in some new memories. There's nothing like a garage sale for getting rid of a lot of unwanted junk! The End.
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