What's in your junk drawer?

I think you can learn a lot from looking in people's junk drawers. Everyone has a least one, maybe two. You know the kind of drawer I'm talking about. It's that drawer in the kitchen or garage that you just toss stuff into. What's in your junk drawer?

I don't know why I don't throw the stuff out. I don't use any of it, and never will. But somehow it's reassuring to open it up and stare inside at some of the cool stuff I used.

Like, for example, the calculator watch. It's kinda cool really. It's got little buttons just like a 10-key calculator, except a little smaller. You could reconcile your checkbook, calculate your computer's disk space,or even keep a total of the items in your shopping cart at the grocery store. So many cool uses for this watch. The great thing about it is that it's waterproof. I used it when we went to Hanauma Bay in Hawaii. (That way I could total the fish that swam by.)

But I had other things in my junk drawer that were really cool. For example I have some mini-disks from my Sony CD player. Yes, it's true that was before the iPods, but still it's sort of nostalgic looking at them now. I used to get great pleasure out of filling up a re-writable CD with some 30 songs. That was cool back then.

I've also got some old travel chargers for my old Palm devices by Palm Inc. before they were bought out by U.S. Robitics and then bought back again. Those were the days when I could fit my entire rolodex on one device.

I know it all sounds so old fashioned looking back from these days. I suppose my Blackberry will join the junk drawer haunts someday soon. But its all so sad really. Here were cool, electronic devices that seemed vital at the time but have become like Woody in Toy Story, they have been abandoned by their owner for the much cooler toys, like Buzz Lightyear.

And so I close my junk drawer for now only to gaze upon it once again at some future time and smile at the useless items I still can't seem to throw out.

...dave
Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was.  ~Will Rogers