Thursday, January 24, 2008

My Bedside Table

One of the perks of not being a famous person is that, should you expire unexpectedly in your bedroom, the media will not pick over the supposed contents of your nightstand with the feverish attention of a bunch of sci-fi geeks at a Cloverfield screening. (You probably also won't suffer the indignity of your dead body being discovered by a pea-brained masseuse whose first instinct was not to call 991 but an Olson twin.) In reality, the objects cluttered on even a non-famous person's nightstand are probably sufficiently random as to raise a few suspicions should they perish in an untimely manner nearby.

I was thinking about this yesterday whilst dusting my bedroom furniture and trying to pare down the amazing amount of stuff on my bedside table. So I made a list of the things lying about (before I did my cleaning):
  • Bag of Ricola cough drops (original flavor)
  • Box of Target Sleep Aid tablets
  • Bottle of Multivitamins (For Her!)
  • Hand cream
  • 3M skin crack care (because I have the hands of a longshoreman)
  • Hair clip
  • Two journals (sadly neglected)
  • Seven books, some partially read (ranging from three humorous meditations on parenting/motherhood, two zombie novels, a weight loss/health book, and a novel I'm reviewing for another blogger)
  • One bead and jewelry making supply catalog
  • Eight magazines (various issues of Craft, ReadyMade, Better Homes and Gardens, Real Simple, and Domino)
  • A cracked drink coaster
  • Daily Bible readings pamphlet (Every year I pick one of these up at church with every intention of reading the Bible in its entirety. I have yet to actually get through March.)
I can only imagine what a stranger, looking for a sensational story behind my untimely demise, would make of my collection. Would they speculate that my death could be attributed to a fatal interaction between store brand sleeping pills and the calcium in my women's multivitamins? That I was depressed over my parental shortcomings and had turned to books and cough medications to alleviate my sadness? Perhaps I had foreseen my death which would explain the religious tract and fascination with the undead? Maybe I was working as a dishwasher at the local Mexican restaurant to support my hidden meth addiction hence the dry, cracking hands?

Goodness knows, the field day someone would have should I be found dead beside my purse. The sheer volume and magnitude of the contents of Big Orange would be enough to fill an entire tabloid's worth of speculative bunk.

When you step back and examine your own life, there's as much randomness as any public figure's. The only difference is that we don't have the jackals from TMZ recording the minutiae of our daily existence. Of course, Britney Spears is still a sociopathic hillbilly retard, paparazzi or no paparazzi.

So what are you hiding on your bedside table?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

i don't have a bedside table, so i rely on my coffee table.
1. a large maglite flashlight
2. an awesome issue of ReadyMade
3. an issue of Fitness mag
4. an empty ben&jerry's container of "everything but the..." with spoon
5. "Flanimals" by Ricky Jarvis
6. "The Mountian Artisans Quilting Book"
7. a sock frog
8. a purple hippo that jingles
9. glasses for distance
10. old gocery lists
11. infant nail clippers
12. an LL Bean catalog (damn they send a lot of those!)
13. a small pad of yellow lined paper
14. a shawl knitting project for the woman up the way. 4 skeins of Koigu yarn, a set of #8 needles and the knitting itself in a feather and fan lace pattern
15. a spiral bound, tiki-themed blank book used for list making
16. remote control for the stupid box

we have house guests coming tomorrow. i need to clean up the mess. the paparazzi would determine that i am an overextended clutterbug with a baby. who makes lists compulsively. and has a fatty fat ass but loves B&J even though i make a pint last 3 weeks... sigh. i killed myself over ice cream and quilting.

-V

Alex the Odd said...

Because of my borderline Photographic memory I can answer this one:

13 books (unread)
1 book (in the process of being read)
Journal (incredibly battered)
The recipie for toffee apple crumble on crumpled notepaper
Codeine and Paracetamol double strength pain killers
Glass of water
Nail clippers
Bedside lamp
Broken alarm clock (doesn't snooze)
Functioning alarm clock
PS2 remote
TV remote
Stereo Remote
Issue of Psychologies
Series 1 and 2 of *coughdigimoncough* on homewritten DVD.

Phew. That's about it. I dread to think what anyone would take away from my list!

Anonymous said...

Hey, I found it odd, also, that the dumb masseuse called an Olsen instead of 911 and worse that the Olsen sent her "NY Bodyguard" over to "assist" instead of telling said masseuse to call 911. He laid there without any rescue attempts for far too long. Had he JUST gone cold, they may have revived him.

So far as my nightstand -
A lamp, a stuffed monkey that I gave my grandpa the Valentines before he died, chapstick, 2 bottles of water, 3 opened magazines (Rachael Ray, SELF, & ?), a Couple's Devotional, Two(?) other books I can't remember...tissues (one empty box, one full box), a t-shirt, and a photo of Jeff & me.
I don't think I want to know what that says about me.

ahamos said...

Have yerself a field day:

2 guns: one .45 and a .225 Baby Browning
A wad of cash
Bible
The Gunslinger Born graphic novel
alarm clock
lamp
3 pocket watches (one from the 1880's!)
Oddments

Clearly I'm a bible-thumping gun-nut with an obsession with time. What killed me? Probably just paranoia over the liberals.

ahamos said...

Oh, yeah: there's a 3rd gun under the bedside table, too...

VermillionBrain said...

1) Several empty packets of Capri Sun fruit punch
2) Several empty wrappers to Reese's Peanut Butter Easter Eggs
3) Old cases for eyeglasses
4) A busted portable media player
5) Two phones, one operational
6) A drawer cluttered with crap
7) An empty cereal bowl
8) An empty water bottle

Possible death: Drowning by renegade Apple Jacks.

By the way, congrats on the kid, but this still doesn't mean I forgive you yet.

Alex the Odd said...

Oh I forgot my possible mode of death:

Blatantly suicide due to over zealous introspection and the realisation that my social life for the last month has consisted of watching kids cartoons that are so bad they make me feel a little dirty for watching them.

JamieSmitten said...

So technically, the bedside table is on Boom's side, so that doesn't really count, does it? (a bunch of books, a statue of Nataraja, and a porcelain box my neighbor brought me from Italy)

On the floor by MY side of the bed, in a fairly neat stack:

1. Wooden backscratcher (single girl's best friend)
2. Amazing Heavenly Heart Massager (tsk, tsk! it is merely a chemical heating pad that you boil and reactivate by bending the metal disk inside. I have cold feet)
2. Lavender sachet (really does make you sleepy)
3. Mrs. C (short for Mrs. Claus -- Boom's Christmas toy that was taken away last night at midnight for untimely squeakage)
4. Book of the Dead (Patricia Cornwell's lastest; oh how the mighty series have tanked)
5. The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas (short stories by Found founder [tee hee!] and American Life presenter, Davy Rothbart)
6. Canadians, A Portrait of a Country and Its People (I'm always trying to be a better Canadian)
7. One Good Turn (by Kate Atkinson, author of the FABULOUS Case Histories)
8. McSweeney's #12 (29 stories written in 20 minutes each!)

So clearly, I had multiple personalities (based on diversity of reading material) and I was scratched to death by myself. Fortunately, the smell of lavender kept things fresh until the ambulance was called by the neighbors who had finally been driven mad by Boom ravaging Mrs. C.

Anonymous said...

Great day, but we are an exciting assortment of fruits and nuts!

I've decided that this will be my wonderful new method of fortune telling: reading your demise from the contents of your bedside table.

V- I'm thinking definitely a connection between yarn and ice cream , but those nail clippers can be mighty deadly in the right hands.

AtO- Okay, you have painkillers. Immediately the paps would jump to the conclusion that you were ferreted away to Hades in a cloudy hazy of drugs. But I think you are more likely to incur some sort of brain short circuit from the radiation emitting nightly from all those darn remote controls.

Ev-Drowning. All that water means something.

My Crazy Husband- Shot down... in a BLAZE of GLOREEEEEEEEE!

Vermillion- Oh it's totally going to be a sugar OD. The Sugar's gonna getcha! But I am impressed with your ability to get that straw into the galldarn Capri Sun packets; I could never master that skill as a child, and it haunts me to this day.

Apology accepted. You know you love it. TK and I totally made your weekend.

JamieSmitten: Read to death. Bibliocide. Death by book.

P'Nut-76 said...

My nightstand( or at least what I remember of it)
On Top
• alarm clock
• box of tissues – not specifically for personal use but so I can regulate Terry’s use. He has killed whole old growth forests trying to alleviate a simple tickle.
• empty bottle of water

In the drawer.. here it gets a little fuzzy
• $50 … because before you can say “the money’s on the night stand” it has to be stashed somewhere.
• old check books
• nail clippers and other nail care items
• Nordstrom beauty samples
• A comb for my unmanageable mane
• highlighters
• random receipts

Below deck
• Q-tips
• My handy church fan
• A folder full of recipes
• A bag of gifts from Savannah that I never passed out.
o A&A a mug that simply says ‘SAVANNAH’
o MATTY G – a shot glass
o JASON a magnet - S.L.U.T.S – southern ladies under tremendous stress
o SARAH C – a spoon that I’ve been told could never compare to the spoon from Iceland so why bother.
o MOM – a Tshirt
o ME – A magnet and shot glass

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