Rant #3,224: Missing You

If you are now reading this Rant on Facebook, you are reading this entry later than normal, and there is a reason for that.

Again, for reasons I do not know, the social networking site completely banned me from posting anything, replying to anything, and doing any activity on the platform for about 12 hours yesterday and into today.

It is clear that I am being targeted, and I have further complained to them about this latest purge of my content, my thoughts, and my freedom of speech.

I don’t see how my G-rated material is being put into the dumpster when there is much worse stuff that gets a pass, but there evidently is nothing I can do about it.

If I was a lawyer, maybe I could do something about it, but being that I am just a lowly freelance writer/editor who happens to be 66 years old and counting, I just have to sit here and take my punishment like the man I am.

I just wish that Facebook would have a better explanation for why they have put me into purgatory, because their explanation is so ambiguous that it makes little or no sense to me.

Onto other matters …

We are still packing things away, and it is really incredible the things that are turning up.

It made me harken back to 1971, when my family moved to the wilds of Long island from the real wilds of South Jamaica, Queens, New York.

It was sort of the reverse of what we are doing now, as we were moving from a two-bedroom apartment to a three bedroom house.

We had plenty to move over back then, but way less than we have accumulated now, planning to move from a three-bedroom house—at least our part of it—to a much smaller two-bedroom apartment.

I remember packing away my comic books back then. My sister and I were given the chore of packing away our prized possessions ourselves, and mine were those comic books. I have no idea what my sister packed away herself, maybe her Barbie collection or her teen magazine collection, but mine were my comic books.

My father was still working 16-hour days then, so if there was packing to be done, my mother probably did it herself.

The incredible thing is that while we took over a lot of the furniture from that apartment to the new house, we did leave quite a bit back in the apartment for the next tenants to use.

I remember them very vividly.

They were an unmarried couple, both 19 years old.

They were Italian, if I remember correctly, and just starting out on their odyssey of being adults and living on their own.

When they found out that a lot of what was in the apartment was going to be left behind, they thanked us time and time and time again, because quite frankly, this couple had nothing … so at least they had something when they finally moved in, giving them a great start.

I remember that couple vividly, and while there is no way to make sure, I hope that they made a go there for at least a few years, setting the tone for them living as a couple happily ever after.

But as for us, my family and I moved almost seamlessly from that apartment to the house, and we certainly did not have as much to pack away as we have today—50 years of things for me, 30 years of things for my wife, and 28 years of things for my son.

And it isn’t easy doing so.

We have now thrown out about 200 bags of garbage and things we do not need anymore, and let me tell you, it seems each of those things we are getting rid of has a memory attached to it.

That is what makes getting rid of these things so difficult, but it is something that has to be done for us to get out of here in one piece.

And it is only things, so maybe they cannot be replaced, but we will still retain the memories these things brought us.

And what we are keeping … as they say--

OY VEY!!!!

Have a nice weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday—

Both here at the Blog and hopefully, on Facebook, too.