Inventory
Alice Khoo
I was moving house recently. In preparation, I emptied out all the boxes hiding in the corners of my closet. Caches stashed away since the day I moved in, things precious enough to keep but not precious enough to remember. You could call me a collector, I suppose, but I don’t think that term is quite right. I don’t go out of my way to collect things, I just have a hard time throwing things away. It feels like throwing away parts of myself. I don’t take many photos, and never have, so I keep my memories in objects instead.
Because of this habit, before moving I had to play an odd game of guessing. Sitting on the carpet in my room, squeezed between moving boxes and furniture, I poured out the contents of each box stored away in my closet, one by one. I sifted through all the memories I’d saved up and decided which ones to keep.
Collection of Star Wars droids
The only time I really participated in the hobby of collecting (intentionally, as opposed to passively as I do now) was as a young child. Each time we passed one of these figurines in a shop, I would beg my mother for just one more, clutching the colourful robot in its plastic package. ‘Oh alright,’ she would eventually say, and the collection would grow.
It was a strange feeling seeing them again after all this time. Hazy memories tugged at me. I knew I had favourites among them, some that I had played with more, that had always received the starring roles. And I knew my favourite was not the famous R2D2. I couldn’t seem to remember the names of any of the others.
But as I looked them over, I felt a particular connection to one droid with a deep orange coloured head. I couldn’t remember what this robot was called, or anything else about it. But something about that shade of orange tugged at my brain. Like there was a memory somewhere in there struggling to get out.
I knew I had another favourite though. It was a greyish blue robot that looked particularly old and beat-up. I didn’t know why it had been my favourite or what adventures I took it on, but I did remember taking it to school one day and losing it. I remembered trying not to cry about it. I had kept hoping it would show up somehow. For years I had thought about it, wondering it would find its way back into my life, but it never did.
I didn’t know exactly why I eventually stuffed them all away in the box I found them in. Maybe my teenage self had deemed them not ‘girly’ enough, or too childish. Some combination of the two had probably been what kept me from taking them back out. But they had stayed with me, waiting in the corner of my closet.
I didn’t know why I had kept them for so long either, or why I was still keeping them now. Most of the memories they held had vanished and the few remaining would likely follow. But I hoped, if I held onto them, that some small memory would remain within them. And now that I was out of the teenage phase, where everything had to be too adult too early, maybe I could take them out of their box and see if any more memories could come back.