"This is the time of year when the box savers of the world have their finest hour.
You know who they are. They're the ones who squirrel away every box and carton they ever receive and bestow the gift of immortality upon it.There is something arrogant about people who save boxes. They remind me of the sanctimonious people who always have their ticket and the right change at the parking garage, or whose car is always in gear when the traffic light changes.
The carton queen in our family is my mother. There is nothing you can name that she does not have an empty box for. Want to wrap a piano? Go to Mother's. Want to surprise someone with a load of firewood? Mother has the carton for it. Buying a goal post for your grandson? Mother can wrap it.
Box savers are not only arrogant about their habit, they are downright evangelistic. I remember the first time I gave my mother a pair of earrings wrapped in a rectal thermometer box. I thought she'd be choked up that I found a box with cotton. Instead, she gave me the Heaven-knows-I-did-the-best-I-could look and said, "Why didn't you come to me for a box?"
I've watched her at birthday celebrations and Christmases. She is like a minesweeper. No sooner is the paper off the present than she is winding the ribbon around her fingers and smoothing the creases out of the wrapping paper. As soon as the recipient holds the gift up for everyone to see, the box disappears to be recycled. It will appear again for the next 35 years . . . somewhere . . . holding something.
This week when I discovered a jogging suit would not fit into a shoe box, I did something I do not take lightly. I went to Mother's for a box.
She flipped on the light in her closet, and I thought, If Tutankhamen's mother had a tomb, this would have been it. I had never seen such a box glut. There were boxes in boxes, boxes for folding chairs, lampshades, tubes for posters and cartons for mattresses. There were boxes singed with black where she had pulled them from the fire.
She turned to me. "What are you putting in this box? Where are you sending it? How much did the item cost? Is there a chance you can get it back after it's used? How important is it to you?"
"I'm not adopting it, Mother, I'm only borrowing it."
"You're the one who makes fun of me every year for saving boxes, aren't you, missy?"
"That's true, Mother, but you know what a rotten person I am."
"You don't treat boxes nicely. I saw you jam an afghan in one one year, and it broke down the sides."
"Mother! I'm begging!"
She handed me a box off the shelf. "Tell me what time it is to be opened, and I'll be there."
1996 The Estate of Erma Bombeck
Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate
