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?