Inventory

My upstairs neighbor at the apartment I lived in until August in Los Angeles was a big help in many ways, one of which was offering me occasional work to help out with his business. He's an insurance adjuster and spent a lot of time in Florida in the aftermath of all the hurricanes (and would let us use his laundry and HDTV with cable in the meantime, this is after GIVING us his old big screen TV when he got the HD). In the wake of all the fires in California, business is booming again for him, and he asked if I could do some remote work for him for some holiday spending money.

So my task is to get information off of these charts that measure the value of items lost in the fires--item, quantity, date acquired, and cost. It's the most mind-boggling process to enter someone's worldly possessions into an Excel data sheet. 6 belts, purchased 2001, $60. It gives new meaning to the way I am when someone compliments me on an outfit and I say, "Hey, thanks, I got it at Target for $10!" I've noticed before in these instances that I could probably calculate the value of my wardrobe, because I DO remember how much I've spent on just about everything. Maybe not as much anymore, but really, isn't it a value in our culture to get a bargain? Isn't every penny-pinching college grad conscious about how much we spend? Maybe it's so we can literally know our value. Imagine having to assign a cost to every possession in your living space, from the adhesive hooks that held up your dish towels to your computer and antique jewelry and, in my case, multiple musical instruments. You can kind of tell, too, what these people value by what items were most valuable. They listed no electronics--no TV or DVD player--did they just not have one? Are they listed on a sheet I haven't gotten to yet? They had $600 worth of sheets but little jewelry, a different value set from what I was raised with (basically I'm completely judging these anonymous, traumatized people who've lost everything by how they fill out a form).

But as I continue to enter these mindless numbers, I realize, too, that each item is an item of loss. These belts, these bed sheets, the wicker chair--it's all something that once existed that no longer does. I can't imagine what it would be like to calculate devestating loss item by item. Could I even remember all my possessions? It gives new meaning to the activity of hypothetically grabbing 3 or 5 things before your house burns down. If only assigning the losses to our hearts were so simple....unless, of course, you count the cost of therapy to recover from these losses. Ha! If only it were that measurable. Being called names in elementary school: $250. Losing Spot, the family pet, in a drive by: Cost for animal lovers--$450, for non-animal lovers $50. Having your heart broken: $1000. Losing your mom before you're 30: $5000. But the losses to our hearts and souls can't be measured, hard as we try, and I'm sure that, just like our material possessions, we have no idea the extent of what we've really lost. But we wouldn't want to be able to get rid of all the pain and get new experiences with a check from the insurance company. That cost would be far too cheap.

Maybe I've come across an idea for a new Master Card commercial.