The single's shack

I spent my entire childhood indulging in three basic activities: playing with Nintendo, playing with myself and playing MASH (Mansion-Apartment-Shack-House). The latter, in fact, being the only activity that didn't require a tiny joystick.\nThus, I could play MASH discreetly in class, organizing my hypothesized future into categorical possibilities:\nCareer: chocolate eater, hooker, bear wrangler, celebrity colonoscopist.\nNumber of Kids: 1, 5, 77, 0 (severed testicle).\nCar: limo, corvette, unicycle, helicopter made of pepperoni.\nOne by one, possibilities were eliminated -- until my fate had been decided. Though I would occasionally wind up as a professional tampon tester forced to ride a bisexual camel to work, as long as I'd ended up with a quality MASH-man, I didn't care.\nThe game would only end tragically when, under the relationship category, the word "alone" was coincidentally circled -- transforming my dream of being married in a mansion to being single in a shack. \nLast week, while helping my friend Lindsay clean out her backyard shed, I realized: My nightmare had actually come true. Not only was I single ... I was cleaning the life-size version of a dirty MASH shack.\nThe shed itself was ungodly filthy -- a satanic port-o-potty of doom. The floor was blanketed with cobwebs and junk left by previous tenants. The odor was similarly rank, a cruel concoction of bacon and diapers.\nWhile cleaning the foul shed, however, I soon came upon an interesting find. An abandoned "ex box". \nUnlike the Microsoft version, an ex box is a box used for storing all remnants of past relationships -- a museum dedicated to past relics of both heartache and happiness. In this case, a Nike shoebox.\nIt was filled with the basics: pictures, movie stubs, cards and a hefty pile of love letters. The original owner, a man named Charlie, had apparently gone through five different girlfriends: an impressive feat for a man with a size 9 shoebox.\nWhy, though, had this box been abandoned? After collecting hundreds of dating artifacts over years of romantic exploration, why had he decided to dump them all?\nGenerally, I began to wonder: Is it OK to trash your own ex box?\nI'll agree: The initial urge is generally to burn it, to grill the box like your name is George Foreman and then mail the leftover ashes to Iraq. However, I do believe it should be kept. \nAs time passes, your reaction to looking at ex memorabilia will hopefully change from moderate nausea to moderate nostalgia. No matter what emotion the items evoke, use it. Cherish the love. Appreciate the heartache. \nTrue, the box holds a painful past, but it also holds the key to a happy future. Because if you can catch love once, in a shoebox no less, you can catch it again.\nThink of every ex as simply that: an "X", a crossed off name under the "LOVE" category. It brings you one step closer to finding your true MASH mate.\nAnd one day, together, you'll jump on your bisexual camel and ride off into the sunset ... holding hands and humps into the golden horizon.