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Tony’ Hicks' Insert Foot · Jul 26, 2026

America! Baseball, hotdogs ... storage units.

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Tony Hicks · Tony’ Hicks' Insert Foot

The next six weeks will be a doozy.

For the record, I’ve no idea what a “doozy” is. But I’m absolutely positive the next six weeks will be one.

I’ll be making a transition, which isn’t the same as “transitioning,” which would make this summer really interesting.

“Moving” is the word of the month. My youngest daughter starts college and is moving, though she’s not entirely sure where. I’m likely moving and am not entirely sure where. Our cats and moody girl lizard are moving, and they’re definitely not sure where.

I caught the lizard browsing Craiglist on her phone, so she may have different plans than us. Not that we know what ours are.

My 94-year-old uncle in Texas is almost definitely moving back to California in August, with his trusty nephew flying to Houston to get him. Do we know when? No.

Do we know where? Not entirely.

Do we know why? Yes!. Because his wife passed a year-and-a-half ago and “there’s nothing to look at in Texas,” he said.

When you turn 95 in a month and your favorite place is Yosemite - he was the first person who took me there when I was 9 - and you’ve spent a couple decades near Houston, you can say that.

I spent the past month looking at assisted living places (for my uncle, though I will likely need one by October), choosing one I visited four times. When we were eight days from the move, they said they couldn’t treat his hopefully-temporary medical condition.

I found another place a day later. Now we’re waiting to hear more.

So none of us know where we’ll live Sept. 1. We’ll talk about my employment (sometimes), savings (HA!), and age (59 in three weeks) another time, or I’ll freak out (yes), set something (my neighbor) on fire, and run naked (eww) down the street screaming.

No pressure (like the bottom of the ocean). I eat pressure for breakfast (then throw up and hug a stuffed animal).

Other than money (please send) - which causes me to sob uncontrollably whenever it comes up - my biggest concern with all this personal ridiculousness is stuff.

As in “how did I get all this stuff and am I dragging it with me yet again to another place?

The stuff dilemma affects many of us. Not to sound like a pinko socialist, but we all have too much stuff. Much of this nation has spent far more on storage units than the value of what’s inside.

We’re all possessed by possessions.

My daughter and I moved from an apartment the size of a cheese kiosk at the mall to a bigger house three years ago, because my other daughter came to live with us.

We decided we liked her and kept her. So we all moved into a two-story with three bedrooms and lots of space. Up a hill - nice views. I hung bird feeders because I’m over 50 and it’s the law. Great place.

But I panic when seeing the TONS of useless crap my daughters and I own, which is a first world-problem causing middle-class liberal guilt. I accept it.

Unless bags of gold fall from the sky over my yard the next few weeks, I’ll soon move from 1,400 square feet of house to a studio, cheese kiosk, or someone’s backyard until it gets too cold. It wouldn’t be the first time, and you should probably buy my book to keep up.

We have boxes and boxes (and boxes) of crap we haul from place to place throughout our lives, because we think we still want or need it.

We don’t. Not even close. I barely need clothes but keep them on for the common good.

On our death beds, we won’t regret throwing away the Popeye pot holder we bought for Mother’s Day 1979, or the 13 pieces of paper on which our children traced their hand and called it a turkey.

I suspect this is a deeply-American issue. I asked a French friend who lives in Italy if other countries have those imaginatively-designed, radioactive-orange storage facilities every half mile, like here in the U.S.

She said they’re rare. Which I believe because she’s very attractive.

Allow me to shovel some more panic on the fire of desperation. I have a mother. Many people do. I’m my mom’s only child and some day she may no longer be around to pay her storage bill. That horrifies me, not only because we’re close and I’m emotionally fragile, because my mom is the queen of stuff.

Coincidentally, she had a mother too, whom we’ll call my “grandmother.” When my grandmother passed into the next life once she realized she hadn’t yelled at my grandfather in nearly 20 years, she left incredible amounts of stuff behind.

My mom, being a U.S, citizen, put it into storage and paid approximately $116 million the next 21 years because she might need an old pillow case my great-grandmother owned during the 19th Century.

One day, and may that day never come, all that stuff becomes mine. And I recently confirmed through multiple legal sources it’s against the law to throw a burning, gas-soaked shirt into a storage unit and run.

So I warn you I may be selling some things on social media the next few months. Before you tell me to set up an eBay store and send me 45 pages of instructions and say “IT’S SUPER EASY!” know that I’m freelancing at a few different publications I can’t keep straight so I can still afford to eat popsicles for dinner, packing a house full of crap I don’t want (and can’t stop thinking is flammable), preparing to wedge a 94-year-old man and his wheelchair into an airplane, and going to therapy because both my daughters are taking their cats with them (seriously - I’ve become a cat person because they pretend to listen so I’ll feed them), come and get some stuff.

Or if you want to rent a room, give me a yell. You can bring some of your stuff and we’ll worry about it later.

My daughters have a dad to feed, so please consider paying $8 a month to read these columns. Find more nonsense in Tony’s book “Lying Drunk,” available from Barnes & Noble at https://bit.ly/46xoaJJ or Amazon at https://a.co/d/cYNCUPp).

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