BABY BOOMERS ENJOY HOT YEARS HOLDING ONTO THINGS

Cleaning house, the garage, or ideas you’ve held onto long enough. via doingitright.com

First we Hold Onto Things to stand up, then Hold Onto Things to stay up.

Hot sounds good.

A hot dinner. A hot rod. A hot shot.

Hot is a difference maker. Hot is cool, until it’s not.

Growing up baby boomer was cool when the Sixties were hot, but how cool could you be in the ninth grade in 1970?

Call it a romanticized past, but hitch hiking to San Francisco with five dollars and waking up in the same clothes for three days is cool until you do it.

It might sound like freedom but it smells funky, and you are the main funk.

Holding onto that memory is like a guide. Be prepared, better prepared, especially when others count on you.

Holding Onto Things, or HOT, isn’t about hoarding. Really.

If you can, try and remember when you started holding onto things.

I brought a kid to my house in grade school, maybe fifth grade. He was a troubled kid from the wrong side of town, but since the town was so small he was more of a neighbor.

He was a punk, and I knew it, but even punks can be friends.

The first thing he did in my house was take a few flat metal chicken decorations off the wall and act like he was stealing them.

Robbing my house right in front of me didn’t seem right, but he did it like it was normal.

“Put them back,” I said.

You know you’ve got to improve your read on people when you invite a thief home and he starts thieving.

“Put what back? What’s missing?”

My brain searched for an answer. I needed to explain to this kid that he and I are the only people here, and my mom’s chickens are gone.

He doesn’t understand that I saw him take them off the wall and hide them in his pants.

What’s next? Fighting him? He was a punk, but a tough punk. I didn’t need to get robbed and beat up and explain what happened to my parents.

“Okay, we got to go. Leave the three chickens. The ones in your pocket. The ones you took off the wall when you walked in here. We got to go. Leave the chickens. Come on.”

Maybe he saw something in my face when I said it, but he dropped the chickens on the table and left alone.

We were never friends, but he kept stealing things, holding onto things.

I held onto the idea that I didn’t need friends like that.

What have you wrapped your arms around? Or unwrapped?