“Can’t you put that unsightly file cabinet in your closet”? said my wife one afternoon when visiting in my study at the university. A cold wave of emotion swept over me akin to horror. Put my file cabinet in the closet? I shuddered as though a part of me had died. I glanced over at the big beige metal box sitting in the corner of the room buttressing my book shelves. Had it heard? I squeezed my eyes towards it in warm reassurance.
I had not answered, but she continued, “It’ll fit, won’t it? Then you could slide your shelving down and make room on this wall for your degrees, awards, pictures, and stuff,” patting the wall where my desk butted it.
“Or you could move the easy chair over …” she trailed off sensing my lack of enthusiasm. She looked at my face
“All the other profs have their file cabinets out in their study,” I whimpered. “Besides” … I cleared my throat to shift the tremulous quality of my voice back to baritone … “I don’t have a light in my closet; I couldn’t see to find anything.” I fiddled with my pen on the desk and avoided her gaze. Seeing I was near to tears, she began to talk about all the things she had to do the rest of the afternoon and guessed she better get at them. She shot the file cabinet a look, said goodbye and left.
I sat there at my desk some moments alone with my file cabinet before I could look over to where it stood. She was right. Aesthetically it was an eyesore … a big, ungainly, dust collecting eyesore. And I loved it.
I glanced for the thousandth time at the jokes, cartoons, and pictures pasted to the portion of its side that projected beyond the bookshelves. The top held a bottle with a candle in it, books, a boar made of wicker (my family’s heraldic beast). I got up from my desk and sat across from it in my easy chair. I read the yellowed labels I had placed on the file drawers when my wife’s parents gave it to me for graduation. The current file drawer, “on Tap”; my idea drawer, “The Incubator”; and so on. There it sat … the repository of my career life. Addresses, examinations, syllabi, journals, lectures, unfinished novels, and articles, old correspondence, clippings. My past, present, and future. The issue of my blood, sweat, and tears. My treasure box and hope chest all rolled up into one.
I sat back and reflected on the awe that gripped me whenever as a student I saw the File Cabinet of a learned man. The secrets and sage wisdom that it held … a veritable symbol of his knowledge and years of study. They seemed to contain all the answers to life’s perplexities. My pulse would quicken whenever my teacher would rise from his seat and stride ceremoniously to the oracular box and retrieve some gem. What professor, I ask you, has ever been able to resist posing at his file cabinet … leaning his enleathered elbow upon an open drawer, a benign expression gracing his noble brow? Now how could anyone do that in a closet?
No, it just would not do. My image would suffer too much. Don’t worry, I murmured, patting the File Cabinet’s warm top drawer handle, I won’t let her get you. It’s still you and me.
Worth Thinking About 