From time to time, a quote swirls around the Internet that goes like this:
These trees which he plants, and under whose shade he shall never sit, he loves them for themselves, and for the sake of his children and his children’s children, who are to sit beneath the shadow of their spreading boughs.
From a French sermon? Greek proverb? Regardless, one sign that I am ever an optimist and benefactor to the world is that I have often (annually) I plant a garden and don’t expect to get anything from it.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. This is: Last week, I bought a box of 500 #10 envelopes.
Ah, gentle reader. My favorite aunt died in, what, 2004? 2005? Not only did her death spur me to have a conversation with my beautiful wife about starting a family, but from her we inherited a set of #10 envelopes which lasted us for fifteen or eighteen years. When we ran out a couple years ago, my beautiful wife picked up a box of 40, and, several years later, we have again run low. So when shopping, I looked at the various options, and I selected the large box because it had the lowest per unit cost.
But the number of things we mail in #10 envelopes is diminishing.
I mean, I use 12 a year for credit card receipts. I mail out remittances for one or two bills every quarter that do not provide their own envelopes. My letters to my grandmother are generally too long to fit in anything but 6″ by 9″ envelopes.
So, likely, my heirs will inherit some, if not most, of these envelopes.
When I’ve gone to estate sales, the most depressing sight is always the partial cans of WD-40, the spice jars, the half-used cleaning products. No one ever wants to think that one might not use up and discard this retail commodity. But it will happen.
