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Oh, Goody ...

So small. So innocent. So cute. I couldn't resist. Yet it will bury me alive.

I'm talking about the little plastic Band-Aid dispenser I got in a goody bag at a conference last week. It's not much bigger than a Band-Aid itself, and it only holds three. And even though I already have a whole box of Band-Aids in the bathroom AND a purse bulging with very rarely used items (Flashlight? Check. Halloween-era Bit-O-Honey? Check. Giant crumb? Check.), I can't bring myself to throw the Band-Aid holder out.

After all, undoubtedly I will need a Band-Aid someday, and if, for some reason, I decide not to grab one from the box, now I can grab one from this mini dispenser. Alternatively, I could put it in my purse and give my Bit-O-Honey a bit o' company, even though I truly cannot remember any time in the past 25 years I have needed a Band-Aid on the road.

Reader, I kept it.

In fact, I kept all of the stuff from the so-called goody bag — the pen with the name of a store that is several states away, the mug whose words already have half-disappeared in the dishwasher, the wiggly rubber thing you're supposed to squish in your hand when you're feeling tense. (Because ... why, exactly? You're so busy squishing you're suddenly too BUSY to be tense?) These are all mine now, along with a new comb and a couple of magnets advertising a community center at the center of someone else's community.

Flotsam floats into our lives like beer cans onto the beach, and just like those cans, it stays there. After all, how can you throw out a perfectly good comb? Even if you have eight already? If you are not holding weekly garage sales or handing out toiletries to strangers, you undoubtedly are hanging on to several items you never will touch again — or items you will touch only when you're looking for another item that you can't find because it's behind a battery of Band-Aid holders.

If you ever wonder why Americans ended up in this financial mess — brought on by foreclosures brought on by our paying more than we could afford for more home than we ever needed — look no further than the goody bag.

Go to any conference or trade show or hotel and you will get a bunch of stuff you very happily were living without until the minute it was right there, free; who could resist? So you schlep it all home, and eventually you need a third bathroom (and mortgage) because you have so many key chains, not to mention mini soaps.

The stockpiling begins at the first birthday party, when a kid comes home with several plastic Slinkys. The uneaten ones end up in a drawer, followed by animal erasers, broken games and hats made out of sponge. The hats eventually morph into giant fingers also made of sponge and printed with the name of a sports team. Then there's a pen from the college tour, a graduation mouse pad ("Class of 2002!"), a picture and frame from Vegas (bachelor/bachelorette party). And finally a goody bag with a trial-size tube of diaper cream from the hospital.

The cycle starts again. Hope you can find that picture frame.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now" and "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.