Day 10 - Christmas Kitties Poster (Throw)

Another embarassing relic from my garage.  Remember the old "Scholastic Book Club" catalogs the teachers would send home with you from school so that you could pester your parents into buying some book or magazine (or poster) for you? 

Those catalogs are still around.  As a kindergarten teacher, Melissa still places Scholastic orders a couple of times a year.  (Turns out those sneaky Scholastic folks have been bribing the teachers into pushing their catalogs for years with assorted freebies for the teachers themselves!  Scholastic entices the teacher, the teacher entices the student, the student begs the parent who eventually gives in and pulls out the check book. What a racket!)

Guess what year I pestered mom and dad for this poster I JUST HAD TO HAVE to decorate my bedroom for Christmas?  If you guessed 1979, you are absolutely right (and maybe a little bit psychic ... and that's creepy!). 

Speaking of "creepy", I just admitted on the World Wide Web that I have spent the last 31 years clinging to a kitty poster.  (You have to admit:  they are cute!)  But NOT ANYMORE.  It is in the recycle box with all the credit card offers that came in the mail today.  Of all the things I own, I will probably have the most problem parting with those which are purely sentimental.  And I've got boxes of emotional souvenirs around here.

I gathered the kids around the poster before I tossed it and I gave them a little sermon.  I said the poster was proof that I could empathize with them and their desire to hold on to all sorts of toys and trinkets and craft projects.  It's a good thing for me to recognize this tendency in myself because long before we started talking about selling the house, their pack ratting had been a point of contention - last week the Drama Queen (age 8) cried when I threw away a fragment of cardboard covered in scotch tape to which she had grown attached! 

I went on to tell the kids about the rich young ruler who came to Jesus (in Luke 18) and said, "Teacher, I've been a good guy all my life and followed all the rules.  What do I have to do to get eternal life?" And Jesus responded, "There's just one last thing... sell everything you've got, give the money to the poor and follow me."  And the man walked away.  He was too attached to his things.  For dramatic effect, at this point I tore my poster and threw it in recycling.

When I finished my little sermon, Dats (age 9) asked, "What happened to that guy?"  I said I didn't know ... that the Bible doesn't say anything more about him.  My boy Ida (age 7) said matter-of-factly, "He probably went to Hell." 

And I believe Ida just showed himself to be bolder than 99% of American preachers.