When I (Jonathan) first moved to Seattle, I had almost no furniture. The moving men had trouble keeping a straight face when they arrived at my place in California.  I think you could have counted the number of boxes shipped to Washington on one hand.

This handsome media cabinet with tinted glass was one of my first purchases. It stored one of the most important pieces of equipment owned by young, economically disadvantged men: the thrift store stereo.

The stereo was, and is, a gem. I had this idea to hook up an old Linux computer to it so that visualizations and numbers would scroll by in an impressive fashion as music played, responding to the beat and generally looking cool. My idea was that people would see this feat of technological prowess and instantly realize how cool I was and want to be my friend.

You can see here how impressive the Linux computer is, and if you weren’t already my friend before reading this blog post, you probably want to be my friend now.

The stereo system was finicky, though, and it was soon disconnected and the computer abandoned. The media cabinet was displaced in the great furniture shuffle that took place when we rearranged the house so we’d have a room for the baby.

I listed it on Craigslist at a variety of prices, starting at $50 and working my way down to $20, with a brief second entry at $50 just because I didn’t want people to think it was a piece of junk. When it didn’t move, I bit the bullet and listed it as free.

Have you ever listed something for free on Craigslist? Free listings create bedlam. I’ve rarely had fewer than five emails in the first 20 minutes the listing is online. People don’t just tell you that they will take your unwanted things. They tell you why they need those unwanted things, knowing full well that you are about to get twenty more e-mails from people who want the thing that you, yourself, no longer want.

So: The media cabinet has gone to a good home, the computer system has been dismantled, and the stereo system is currently serving unobtrusively as a second pair of speakers for the television.  There’s probably a good metaphor in here about things going on to find new meaning in a different stage of life.