The first shredding event offered by the Alberta Motor Association was this past Saturday. It is an opportunity to clean out personal papers as part of spring cleaning and to have them shredded in a secure situation supervised by staff.

I spent the good part of an afternoon going through old tax records, more than six years old, according to Canada Revenue Service. It has been awhile and inasmuch as I am usually pretty good about cleaning out anything that is no longer used, useful or relevant, I was surprised to find that I had actually been remiss.

There was a whole history in my file cabinet that I had not visited for a long time, much like discovering an old photograph album and spending time looking through it for the pure pleasure of remembering past events.

I dutifully and carefully stacked all the returns and attached documents in a box after I had perused them, being careful to remove large metal clips that might raise havoc with the shredder. I was surprised to see that so much of my life could be fitted easily into a box and a half.    

I went a little early, thinking that it was better to wait near the front of the line then at the back of a line that might go around the block later in the day. To my delight, I was actually the first to arrive and was instructed to park at the head of the line and await instructions.

A convoy of four large shredding trucks arrived, each parking adjacent to a separate lane for accommodate the line-up of waiting cars, each car to stop, unload and exit. It clearly was very organized and efficient system.

I guess I had assumed a protocol worthy of the importance of these personal documents being transformed to another form of existence, perhaps to insulate attics.  I think that might be what is in our house.

I pictured being asked for my identification and surely my AMA membership card, so that the personal nature of all that paper could be authenticated. No. The shredder man simply motioned to me that he was ready.

I brought over the first box. He quickly grabbed it and unceremoniously tipped it over into the hopper of the shredder. All that history was gone in a flash, in a very brief grinding noise. The second half box was, of course, even less eventful, hardly causing the machine to notice.

It was all over in an anticlimactic way, the only thing left to do was to exit with my empty boxes to make room for the next person. No point in being too sentimental about one’s history, I guess. Otherwise we are never able to let things go.