SEPT_OCTOBER_2015_FINAL_no bleed

the Savings issue

and such, but I began to save our cereal boxes, cake mix boxes, saltines, Nabisco cookies, Pringles containers — which were new at the time, and their cylindrical shape was very alluring to a kid so enamored with empty dry goods containers as I was. Coffee cans, spaghetti boxes, Saran Wrap, Reynolds Wrap (a personal favorite, since my middle name was — well, still is — Reynolds). I even secreted off, from time to time, when my mom came home with a trunk full of groceries and would not be likely to notice

— full, unopened rolls of paper towels and toilet paper, because I really like the way they stacked on top of each other. I was then, as I am now, enamored of and beholden to symmetry. I abhor things out of order or place. I think it’s called OCD these days. Back then — and still now, I

guess — the term for it references the lower posterior region of the human physiology. If you know what I mean. And I think you do. And so I amassed an enormous inventory of boxes and containers in my bedroom. I kept them in the closets, in my drawers, under my bed. I lived in a big house with five kids and a live-in nanny, and I was the youngest

I can no more tell you why I started saving egg cartons than why I saved sugar packets. Maybe you can afford to pay a shrink to figure out why you did what you did when you were a kid, but I look back not in anger or sorrow. Puzzled would be a better word for it. So, yeah: Egg cartons. Don’t ask why. I have no idea.

They just didn’t interest me as much as egg cartons. Go figure. My bedroom at the time had two closets, and one of themwas filled— literally, filled —with egg cartons. And then came a point — I can’t exactly recall when or why — that I decided to expand my interests. In the business world, I guess you would call it “diversifying”.

and generally ignored and left to my own space and devices so …nobody knew about it. Except my friends. On Saturday mornings, when all my older brothers and sisters would scram out the front door and head off to their friends and various activities, I would

They were cardboard back then, not Styrofoam. There were eight of us living in the house, so we went through a lot of eggs. A lot of eggs. (We ate hot dog omelets for brunch every Sunday; that’s how much we loved eggs. And hot dogs.) So, you know how when you

“And that’s when I decided to open one of my own. A grocery store. I already had a good start — eggs and sugar. So I went on a dry goods extravaganza.”

I had my sugar packets. And I had my egg cartons. And I loved going to the grocery store with my mom. I loved going to the grocery store with my mom. All those aisles, all that food, all those bright colors, everything stacked and organized and tidy and just so. And that’s when I decided to open one of my own. A grocery store. I already had a good start — eggs and sugar. So I went on a dry goods extravaganza. I knew enough not to save dairy packages

invite my best friends over, and before they arrived, I would open my closet doors and dig under my bed and gather all my stuff and — open a grocery store! Every Saturday, I would inventory and stack and arrange all my packages and containers and have my friends come over to shop. I was in a state of pure bliss. I was in heaven. I was the happiest kid in my town. I had what every normal red-blooded American child wanted at age 10: I had my own grocery store!

buy a really cool gift for a kid, what he ends up playing with isn’t the toy but the box it came in? That was me with egg cartons. They were fun to stack. I played with them like other kids played with building blocks. I piled them into towers. Built castles. Toppled them and built them all over again. And this would be a poignant story if we were poor and this was how we made do as a family but — not only could we afford proper building blocks — we had proper building blocks.

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2015