I have a lot of issues with my parents. Or rather, they have a lot of issues with me. One of my mom's favorite things to argue about is how I am a packrat (guilty) and keep tons and tons of junk that I don't need. While I fully admit to being a packrat, it is really not nearly as dire a situation as she makes it out to be. I get rid of things that I have no use for anymore. Most of my stuff is made up of books and papers. (My mom doesn't understand why I would want to own a book--she figures once you've read a book once, why would you ever want to read it again when you know what's going to happen? But to me my books are like my children, and I read them over and over again, which is why I like to have them around.)
Now, it wouldn't bother me so much to have my mom yelling at me about all my stuff and the messiness thereof, if it weren't for the fact that her room is also very messy and full of things she doesn't use or need anymore. She is always quick to say that it is all my dad's, and it's a genetic thing which she shares no part in. I know that is somewhat true--my dad is a packrat, and his parents were, too. Their house always had rooms and rooms that they didn't really use because they were completely full of stuff. They weren't hoarders or anything, they just had a lot of stuff. So my mom is always quick to say that it's just a Brown thing and she has nothing to do with it. (Although anyone who goes in the parents' bedroom can tell you that a fair amount of the stuff is my mom's.)
And it is true that my mom's family is the opposite. One thing that always drives us completely crazy is how my mom and grandma love to throw things away. I'm not exaggerating; they actually feel joy when they put things in the trash. I do not understand it. My grandma does it because that's who she is; my mom does it to try to prove that she doesn't ever keep anything around that she doesn't need anymore. (If you watch closely, though, it's always other people's things she's throwing away.) But she's always on my case because I supposedly keep all these things I don't need (as I said, I love books, and I have some toys and gifts that I like to keep for sentimental reasons, but if it's something I can't or won't use again and there is no sentimental attachment and no possibility to offend someone, then I get rid of it pretty quickly), whereas she has never once in her life kept anything that she wasn't going to be using again soon.
So I've got the house to myself for a brief couple of days, so I decided to do some poking around in the basement. I threw out some food down there that was several years past it's prime (which my mom will probably freak out about when she discovers it, because she figures if it's sealed it will never ever go bad, no matter how many years have passed), and I found something interesting down there with all the old cans that I just had to laugh at. It was a bottle of prescription medicine. This is not in and of itself funny, until you realize that my mom has been keeping it down there since 1991. No joke. This bottle of medicine was filled for my older brother Jeremy on January 11, 1991. Hello! How can she say she never keeps anything she doesn't need anymore, and here she is with a child's prescription that is eighteen years old?!
Okay, you're probably thinking, maybe my brother got better so she decided to keep it in case he got sick again or something, and then it was just forgotten until I dug it out. But there are two clues on the bottle that suggest that this is not the case, that she had some other reason for keeping it. The first is a sticker near the bottom of the bottle front. It says: "THIS CONTAINER IS NOT FULL BUT CONTAINS THE EXACT AMOUNT PRESCRIBED BY YOUR DOCTOR." So this was not one of those prescriptions where you just take it when you feel like you need it so there could be some left over after you are better. This is one of those where they give you an exact amount to take and you must take all of it, even if you get to feeling better. If you don't, the germs may not be fully killed off, and they can become immune from the effects of the drug. And if you decide to self-medicate with it later when you think you have the same sickness, you will be dealing with different germs which will react differently, with the usual effect that they become more drug resistant. Just look up antiobiotic resistance on the internet for some good examples of this. It's also caused by thinking that antibiotics work on anything (similar to how various painkillers will dull nearly any pain), when in reality they have no effect whatsoever if you don't have a bacterial infection. Many people refuse to believe this and insist on taking antibiotics whenever they have a cold or other ailment, and since most doctors won't give them to you nowadays if you don't have a bacterial infection (they do absolutely NOTHING to viral infections, people!), I think people save them in case they think they need them some other time. Which goes back to the other problem of people not taking all of the medicine and innoculating the bacteria rather than killing them. And I personally shook my fist at and mentally cursed all the people who have done this and thus helped the germs evolve and become resistant when I had strep throat for nearly a month that was penicillin resistant.
Okay, so on to the second clue. This clue is not so obvious, so I'll explain. It is the date itself. On January 11, 1991, my family was still living in South St. Paul. We didn't move down to Faribault until four or five months after that. Now moving is a time when most people, even terrible packrats, get rid of a lot of their stuff. They have to get all of it out of their house, and in the process they find lots of things that they forgot they had that they obviously don't use anymore and decide to get rid of it. They also find that the less stuff they have to move over the easier it is, so even things that they like and use on rare occasions, they get rid of to make the move slightly less of a hassle. So surely an old bottle full of prescription medicine would be thrown away. Why would you take that with you when you move? But apparently my mom cleaned out our cupboards, found this old bottle of prescription medicine, and made the conscious, mental decision to keep it and move it with her to the new house. Why would someone who NEVER keeps anything she doesn't need keep this? She is worse than me! I never keep old medicines. If I decide for some reason not to keep taking a prescription, I will dispose of the remainder. I wouldn't want to risk taking the wrong amount or something by deciding after a long time to self-medicate rather than getting a doctor to write a new prescription. And I wouldn't give my prescriptions to someone else--the doctor prescribed them for me, for my specific ailments and my specific body, and therefore shouldn't be used by someone else.
Heck, for that matter, I don't even keep over-the-counter medicines after they've reached the expiration date stamped on the packaging. This also drives my mom crazy. She says that medicines never go bad or "expire" and that the FDA requires every single thing to have a date stamped on it for legal reasons, so drug companies just make up a date that is a few years in the future to put on there because they have to, not because it actually expires then. But if you do a little research into the shelf life of medications (which sadly, I have, and even more sadly, I was doing it for my own personal edification, not for a school paper or something) you will find that, after time, the various components in medicines start to break down and separate. In rare cases this can be harmful. Usually it's not harmful, but rather renders the medicine useless because once the elements have broken down it doesn't act the same way. Extremes in weather can also boost this process (which is why the packaging will recommend certain temperatures you store your medicines at). If you don't believe me about all this, and don't believe all the medical science backing me up, do yourself a little experiment. Get yourself a bottle of Excedrin, and leave it sitting in your hot car for a couple of months, or in the back of your medicine cabinet or closet for a year or so. Then open it up and sniff it. I can pretty much guarantee that it will smell strongly of vinegar. That is because the ingredients in the pills gradually break down and form new substances, one of which is vinegar. And while Excedrin works great at relieving aches and pains, vinegar--not so much. So once they've reached the point where they aren't as useful anymore, I get rid of them. See, I'm not so much of a packrat as some people.
It kind of irritated me, because she's keeping things around like this that she doesn't need anymore, and criticizes me for keeping things around that I actually do use and need. I think we each have our own inherited brand of packrat-ism. (Case in point, my grandma is always carrying around and keeping prescriptions that are years old, and/or belonged to other people, and she thinks I'm being silly and stupid when I have a terrible pain somewhere and, when there aren't any over-the-counters readily available, refuse to take the pills that were prescribed to her sister Jeaner in 2005 that she for some reason carries around in her purse.) I just wish the pot would quit calling the kettle black.
Now, it wouldn't bother me so much to have my mom yelling at me about all my stuff and the messiness thereof, if it weren't for the fact that her room is also very messy and full of things she doesn't use or need anymore. She is always quick to say that it is all my dad's, and it's a genetic thing which she shares no part in. I know that is somewhat true--my dad is a packrat, and his parents were, too. Their house always had rooms and rooms that they didn't really use because they were completely full of stuff. They weren't hoarders or anything, they just had a lot of stuff. So my mom is always quick to say that it's just a Brown thing and she has nothing to do with it. (Although anyone who goes in the parents' bedroom can tell you that a fair amount of the stuff is my mom's.)
And it is true that my mom's family is the opposite. One thing that always drives us completely crazy is how my mom and grandma love to throw things away. I'm not exaggerating; they actually feel joy when they put things in the trash. I do not understand it. My grandma does it because that's who she is; my mom does it to try to prove that she doesn't ever keep anything around that she doesn't need anymore. (If you watch closely, though, it's always other people's things she's throwing away.) But she's always on my case because I supposedly keep all these things I don't need (as I said, I love books, and I have some toys and gifts that I like to keep for sentimental reasons, but if it's something I can't or won't use again and there is no sentimental attachment and no possibility to offend someone, then I get rid of it pretty quickly), whereas she has never once in her life kept anything that she wasn't going to be using again soon.
So I've got the house to myself for a brief couple of days, so I decided to do some poking around in the basement. I threw out some food down there that was several years past it's prime (which my mom will probably freak out about when she discovers it, because she figures if it's sealed it will never ever go bad, no matter how many years have passed), and I found something interesting down there with all the old cans that I just had to laugh at. It was a bottle of prescription medicine. This is not in and of itself funny, until you realize that my mom has been keeping it down there since 1991. No joke. This bottle of medicine was filled for my older brother Jeremy on January 11, 1991. Hello! How can she say she never keeps anything she doesn't need anymore, and here she is with a child's prescription that is eighteen years old?!
Okay, you're probably thinking, maybe my brother got better so she decided to keep it in case he got sick again or something, and then it was just forgotten until I dug it out. But there are two clues on the bottle that suggest that this is not the case, that she had some other reason for keeping it. The first is a sticker near the bottom of the bottle front. It says: "THIS CONTAINER IS NOT FULL BUT CONTAINS THE EXACT AMOUNT PRESCRIBED BY YOUR DOCTOR." So this was not one of those prescriptions where you just take it when you feel like you need it so there could be some left over after you are better. This is one of those where they give you an exact amount to take and you must take all of it, even if you get to feeling better. If you don't, the germs may not be fully killed off, and they can become immune from the effects of the drug. And if you decide to self-medicate with it later when you think you have the same sickness, you will be dealing with different germs which will react differently, with the usual effect that they become more drug resistant. Just look up antiobiotic resistance on the internet for some good examples of this. It's also caused by thinking that antibiotics work on anything (similar to how various painkillers will dull nearly any pain), when in reality they have no effect whatsoever if you don't have a bacterial infection. Many people refuse to believe this and insist on taking antibiotics whenever they have a cold or other ailment, and since most doctors won't give them to you nowadays if you don't have a bacterial infection (they do absolutely NOTHING to viral infections, people!), I think people save them in case they think they need them some other time. Which goes back to the other problem of people not taking all of the medicine and innoculating the bacteria rather than killing them. And I personally shook my fist at and mentally cursed all the people who have done this and thus helped the germs evolve and become resistant when I had strep throat for nearly a month that was penicillin resistant.
Okay, so on to the second clue. This clue is not so obvious, so I'll explain. It is the date itself. On January 11, 1991, my family was still living in South St. Paul. We didn't move down to Faribault until four or five months after that. Now moving is a time when most people, even terrible packrats, get rid of a lot of their stuff. They have to get all of it out of their house, and in the process they find lots of things that they forgot they had that they obviously don't use anymore and decide to get rid of it. They also find that the less stuff they have to move over the easier it is, so even things that they like and use on rare occasions, they get rid of to make the move slightly less of a hassle. So surely an old bottle full of prescription medicine would be thrown away. Why would you take that with you when you move? But apparently my mom cleaned out our cupboards, found this old bottle of prescription medicine, and made the conscious, mental decision to keep it and move it with her to the new house. Why would someone who NEVER keeps anything she doesn't need keep this? She is worse than me! I never keep old medicines. If I decide for some reason not to keep taking a prescription, I will dispose of the remainder. I wouldn't want to risk taking the wrong amount or something by deciding after a long time to self-medicate rather than getting a doctor to write a new prescription. And I wouldn't give my prescriptions to someone else--the doctor prescribed them for me, for my specific ailments and my specific body, and therefore shouldn't be used by someone else.
Heck, for that matter, I don't even keep over-the-counter medicines after they've reached the expiration date stamped on the packaging. This also drives my mom crazy. She says that medicines never go bad or "expire" and that the FDA requires every single thing to have a date stamped on it for legal reasons, so drug companies just make up a date that is a few years in the future to put on there because they have to, not because it actually expires then. But if you do a little research into the shelf life of medications (which sadly, I have, and even more sadly, I was doing it for my own personal edification, not for a school paper or something) you will find that, after time, the various components in medicines start to break down and separate. In rare cases this can be harmful. Usually it's not harmful, but rather renders the medicine useless because once the elements have broken down it doesn't act the same way. Extremes in weather can also boost this process (which is why the packaging will recommend certain temperatures you store your medicines at). If you don't believe me about all this, and don't believe all the medical science backing me up, do yourself a little experiment. Get yourself a bottle of Excedrin, and leave it sitting in your hot car for a couple of months, or in the back of your medicine cabinet or closet for a year or so. Then open it up and sniff it. I can pretty much guarantee that it will smell strongly of vinegar. That is because the ingredients in the pills gradually break down and form new substances, one of which is vinegar. And while Excedrin works great at relieving aches and pains, vinegar--not so much. So once they've reached the point where they aren't as useful anymore, I get rid of them. See, I'm not so much of a packrat as some people.
It kind of irritated me, because she's keeping things around like this that she doesn't need anymore, and criticizes me for keeping things around that I actually do use and need. I think we each have our own inherited brand of packrat-ism. (Case in point, my grandma is always carrying around and keeping prescriptions that are years old, and/or belonged to other people, and she thinks I'm being silly and stupid when I have a terrible pain somewhere and, when there aren't any over-the-counters readily available, refuse to take the pills that were prescribed to her sister Jeaner in 2005 that she for some reason carries around in her purse.) I just wish the pot would quit calling the kettle black.
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