Vials of sand

When old people die, I sell their stuff on eBay. \nFor years, I've bought pre-owned goods at local estate sales and resold them on the Internet. Antiques, books, clothes. It's like legalized grave robbing -- a peculiar profession I'll admit. \nWhile most college kids are waiting tables or folding jeans at Hollister, I'm scouring the obituaries, looking to see if profits will increase. \nThough morbid, it's surprisingly lucrative. When an elderly couple with vintage, Noritake bone china died in August, I made enough money to get fifth-row seats at the "American Idol" concert. \nHad Katherine McPhee farted, I probably could have somewhat faintly smelled it. \nLast summer, however, I acquired something even more precious than someone's possessions: someone's memories. \nInside a dusty cigar box was a collection of small glass vials, each filled with sand from a different city from around the world. Apparently, the man who had died was an avid traveler and had been collecting them for decades. Now, here it was, his entire life in a cigar box. \nIt was marked at $1.\n"He always was going somewhere," his niece regaled me. "Always moving. Always blowing in the wind."\nWhile cleaning over break, I re-discovered the box, which had been buried under a small stack of gay porn DVDs (cleverly hidden in Shania Twain jewel cases of course).\nAs I pilfered, I was amazed by the various destinations: Laguna Beach, Calif., Quito, Ecuador, and Bar Harbor, Maine. \nRifling through his bottled memories, I was suddenly confronted by one of my own. There, in bolded font, was my ex-boyfriend's last name, which apparently was also the name of an offbeat Midwestern city. In light of the name's rarity, it struck me as instantly peculiar. Then I looked at the date. \nJan. 6, the same day I was reading it. \nMy jaw dropped, so far -- in fact -- you could have vacuumed my lower lip. It was one of those eerie events that make you evaluate the difference between mere coincidence and cosmic symbolism. Immediately, I knew what it meant. \nThough my relationship -- like the man himself -- had long ago passed, I was still clutching a vial of sand, tiny flecks of granular hope that we might one day become friends. \nThough I initially tried -- as so many foolhardy exes do -- to establish such camaraderie, the attempts dissipated. Inevitably, we began passing each other on the street, like strangers. \nStrangers, despite the fact that I had named his testicles "copy and paste."\nThus, as I stared at the vial, I realized: Any attempt at friendship would be as transparent as the glass itself. You can't capsulate friendship any more than you can capture a country in a bottle. \nUpon this realization, I left my house and ran to the neighborhood lake across the street. At the water's edge, I opened up the vial and poured the sand into my hand. \nThen, in one quick, flamboyant motion, probably the gayest throw imaginable, I tossed the sand into the air, watching the grains vanish, blowing into the evening wind.