Better Off Dead

The test of a true friend is whether he’ll come to your house, moments or hours after your death, and quickly dispose of the embarrassing or potentially humiliating bric-à-brac we all collect over the course of the years.

Get your head out of the gutter: I’m not thinking specifically about pornographic or otherwise dicey material. I’m thinking about nasty letters never sent, notes in book margins, diaries written during bleak years, bottles of unseemly medications, incongruous record albums, childish photographs, hair dye, dunning notices from credit-card companies, online-dating material, ludicrously fashionable garments, and half-finished “Success Journals” from the Tony Robbins series “Awaken the Giant Within.”