To say that I’m different is a bit of a cliche. After all, unless you’re part of identical twins, triplets, etc., we’re all different.
But some of my actions are different from most folks. If they don’t make me different, they probably make me weird. And if you read this column regularly, you already know that.
As does my husband, Brad, who has been known to roll his eyes when I say that I like doing certain things.
First up: I love to roll change.
Yeah, I know. It’s weird.
But I’ve loved to roll change in those paper wrappers since I was a kid. I add it all up and take it to the bank. My late Mom used to put change into coffee cans. One afternoon, I wrapped all the change she had save for years—and she actually had enough to buy a new computer.
You can’t make this stuff up.
When those automatic machines came out—where you dump in your change, and they calculate it, give you money, but take a percentage of it—I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “People don’t like to roll their own change?” I gasped as I asked my husband, and Mom, and friends.
They all answered with a resounding “No,” that no one, it seems, loves to roll change. They don’t even like it. But I do. In fact, if I could make a decent percentage from it, I would do it for other people.
But alas, the machines have beaten me to it.
Perhaps I was a banker in a previous life…
Next up: I love to shred paper.
I have no idea where this love comes from. I really don’t think I was a mouse in a previous life who loved to shred up paper for nests.
But I keep a box in our kitchen and in my home office to put all the paper that needs shredding. I will let it fill up, and then sit down on an afternoon or evening and shred away! I love when we clean through old paperwork because it leads to more and more and more shredding!
One time, I had a box of paper that I planned to shred over the weekend. When I was doing something else, Brad took the box up to my office and shredded everything.
When I found the empty box later, I knew it had to be him. After all, our dogs don’t have opposable thumbs, and the only paper shredding that one of them does is with his mouth—by pulling papers out of my recycle box and eating them.
But I digress…
Brad had to be the culprit.
“Hey—did you shred all the paper in the box I had down here?” I asked him.
“Oh yeah. I did that this morning,” he said while acting quite proud of himself.
“Seriously? But I wanted to shred it,” I exclaimed.
“Seriously? You actually like shredding paper?” he asked. Then after a minute, he added, “Is this like how you love rolling change? What is wrong with you?”
I don’t know, my love. I just don’t know.
Final weird thing I do: I love to take stuff to the dump.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the dump is not exactly the nicest place to go. It’s stinky. It’s dusty. It’s got seagulls and other birds flying all over the place.
But I love getting rid of stuff that we can’t upcycle, recycle, donate, pass on, etc. I also get quite the thrill of throwing boxes upon boxes of recycling into the giant dumpsters they have.
I think that this one is less about the actual action and more about how we’re ridding our home of more things.
Perhaps this is why I love doing all these things: the change rolling, the paper shredding, and the dump visiting: I’m simply trying to clean up.
Maybe I should go the way of Maria Kondo, the author who famously said, “If it doesn’t bring you joy, get rid of it.”
I think she also said something about keeping only 30 books. I’ve got that many on my nightstand to be read. So perhaps it’s not that I want to clean up.
When it comes down to it, maybe I’m just weird.
Or different…
Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski, when she’s not way-too-excited about an upcoming run to the dump, writes “Wojo’s World®” from Baltimore.
She’s also the author of the award-winning book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box. You can connect with Wojo on Facebook or on Twitter.
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