war for territory

Every spring cleaning, my home turns into a warzone. On the other side of the living room stands my nemesis, hissing and spitting, nostrils aflare, eyes burning laser holes into mine, voice climbing uncharted sonic regions of the octave. I'm talking about my beautiful wife, of course. And here I stand, legs atremble, knowing full well I am at her mercy, pretending otherwise. The recurrent bone of contention is my cassette collection, 700 odd relics from my youth, that I refuse to let go of. She recounts a hundred perfectly sane reasons for why I should have thrown them away long ago, or at least 12 years ago (when we got married). I have nothing to play them on anymore you see, and even if I did, there's hardly any time. I possess mp3 copies for most of them, which I sometimes play in my car. And they occupy a helluva lot of space. In a house with two growing kids, storage space is more premium than real estate in Gurgaon. Why do I lug them along, then? For the best of reasons- the sentimental kind. While wife dear scorns my cassettes like they're letters from my imaginary girlfriend, little does she know how close she is to the truth. Indeed, I feel I have had an amorous  affair with my cassettes. Every one of them is like a time capsule that preserves memories of another time, another person. Each one is a sacred Dead Sea Scroll, a secret message from the younger me to the present me. So, hold my ground I shall. For though I walk through the valley of the shadow of wife, I fear no forced celibacy. Till it's truce again, for another year.