Cleaning out my closet

The muggy, hot and lazy Indiana summer is drawing to a close, and students will soon flood the streets of Bloomington again. There will be puke in the alleys, inappropriate mottos written on street signs with black markers and drivers swerving around out-of-towners. With moving season coming, students will be breaking out the shovels and starting to sift through the wreckage that has been their apartment for the past year.\nOn the morning of Aug. 18, I will only have four hours to throw my surplus stuff into a U-Haul, drive across town and drop it on the lawn of a new apartment complex. But long before that morning, I and many like me will rummage through our closets, packing away everything from T-shirts to rubber chickens safely for transport to our new homes. What can I expect to find? I don’t know, but judging by the fabled history of my apartment and close observations of others’ lifestyles, here are a few surprises that one can find while cleaning out their closet.\nFirst and foremost, nothing beats finding empty condom wrappers on the floorboards. These are usually amusing to discover if you’re alone and working tirelessly to get packed for moving day, but they can be quite awkward if your mother is helping you pack. It’s hard to convince Mom you’re a good boy who spends most of his time praying when the evidence of premarital sex is so readily available.\nA frustrating object to find is a simple box. Whether marked by some mail service or bright and colorful with a picture of the product it once held on display, the biggest problem with finding a box is that then you have to find what goes in the box. Unfortunately it appears that either the object has been lost or, more likely, stolen by a drunk “friend.” Tracking down your stuff can be an all day affair involving phone calls, driving around town, breaking down a few doors, making some threats with baseball bats or bribing a neighbor. And even after this process you aren’t guaranteed to get the damn thing back. Oh, and dude who lives two apartments down: You think I can get the 20 or so DVDs of mine you have? I can come over and show you my Louisville Slugger later if it will help.\nBut my favorite (and also most common) moving-day find is the mountain of old bottle caps. It’s a stroll down memory lane for those alcoholics in the world who remember the days of beers tasted past. For instance, I didn’t even know I’d had Bad Elmer’s Porter. \nI probably tried it that night I took my neighbor’s toaster oven. It’s okay though. They threw the box away. \nBut unfortunately for everyone involved, the summer is dissolving and cleaning out your closet will eventually reveal the most disgusting thing you’ve seen in a good while (even worse than the not-so-empty open condom wrapper Mom found): school books.