So, another Thanksgiving holiday come and gone. And, with it, goes another Thanksgiving Day weekend, full of television marathons, football, and shopping. And the greatest of these, of course, is the shopping.

I have to admit, though the deals are fantastic, I have never been drawn in by the promise of huge savings that is Black Friday. This is not because I possess some heroic quantity of will-power, nor is this the result of any kind of principled stance. It just so happens that every year, coincidentally, by the time Black Friday comes along I am completely broke.

So it goes this year: As of 12:01 AM on Friday, November 27th, I had exactly $2.17 in my bank account. (And that’s going to have to stretch until next Friday, so I can’t spend it all at once.) This is not an especially bad sum to have left (it’s certainly better than those occasions when I am completely in the red). It is merely the result of several unavoidable emergencies all kind of stacking up on one another.

The thing is, I know that my existence would not even be possible without the constant support of friends, family, co-workers, good Samaritans, charity, random acts of kindness, blind luck, and the government, amongst others. I am a very, very fortunate person. I am also a complete wash-out, since even with all the advantages I have, I somehow manage to deteriorate a little bit more every day. I have absolutely no right to complain about anything, anywhere, ever.

About 20 minutes ago, my clothes dryer died.

It is also quite likely the last clothes dryer I will ever own, because I will surely never have enough money to buy another one ever again. Which is good—more than good, even. It’s a wonderful, glorious thing. I mean, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not complaining. But I am getting a overwhelming feeling of nostalgia.

I save these various last things in my mental museum. I clearly remember the last visit any location that I know I would never return to, because I deliberately stand there and have my little moment of “this is it, this is the last time” contemplation. I fix last meetings in my memory, too. When disposing of some artifact that I’ll never be able to replace, I take a second to savor it.

So it goes with this latest casualty of planned obsolescence. Already I feel the memorization machinery in my head whirring and buzzing—getting ready to fix all relevant sensations associated with my poor old clothes dryer into a kind of permanent mental memorial. I shall therefore be able to recall, for the rest of my life, what the buttons and dials looked like, what they felt like, what they sounded like, as those these things are significant which, of course, they are not. But it’s an automated process: I cannot stop it.

(Actually, I really will remember all of these things, because I’ll be forced to confront them on a regular basis. I mean, I certainly can’t afford to have somebody haul my broken clothes dryer to the dump, now can I?)

Of course, when the electrical patterns and cell structures that represent my conscious mind break down and cease to exist, so will the memories of all of these last things. But, in many cases, the things themselves will continue, and the dissolution of my mental museum will affect them not at all. The people and the places at least will remain unchanged; only the ephemera will disappear when I go. That’s a little sad; in some way, I think that all the various gimgracks and gadgets in my memory deserve to be remembered, even if I don’t.