1991 Stephen King released a horror novel called, “Needful Things“. In 1993 they released a movie under the same name. I remember when the movie came out and I found the premise interesting. People who were willing to do evil in order to get what they wanted. 

A supposed work of fiction, but we are in no shortage of people today that are willing to do the similar things of evil to get what they want. In some cases, people who are willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want are celebrated. Our ability to draw some form of attachment to things is such a fascinating thing to me. The impact of which can sometimes wreak havoc on our relationships.

I knew of a woman…

Who went on a trip with a friend of hers that happened to be an overnight trip. Her friend was tight on funds and so her boyfriend covered the full cost of everything for them to go. The woman and her friend went on the trip and then two days later returned.

When the woman told her boyfriend about the trip she told him about how they checked into their hotel room and decided to get something to eat. How they were both very tired from the drive and were hungry. But that they went through a McDonalds drive through and because she wanted “real food” she had her friend sit in the car eating McDonalds, while she went inside a different restaurant and had a real “sit down” meal. When the guy asked why she didn’t just pay for her friend to enjoy a sit down meal with her. Her response was, “I felt like we had done enough”.

That woman literally sat inside a warm building and got served a warm meal while her friend sat in a car in the parking lot eating fast food alone. To say that guy lost respect for her at that moment is an understatement. It wasn’t even her money! 

I knew a guy…

That had a beautiful Mustang. I mean, this car was damn nice. I was there to do a review of his estate. And that man could not wait to show me the pride and joy he had of that car. A car that every one of his kids had helped him work on and restore. So after admiring the car a bit we got to work going through his estate documents.

None of which, mentioned anything about his beautiful Mustang. He had 9 kids. Who he was confident would not want to sell the car. But my question to him was, “Which one gets to keep it in their garage?” He hadn’t thought of how each of them would have a shared emotional attachment to a car they all worked on with their father. Or how the spouses of his kids would influence the outcome of their negotiations about it.

I’ve seen families destroy each other over family heirlooms. Silverware, a bowl, a special chair, or a painting. Monetary value be dammed, no price is too small and no value could matter more than an inanimate object placed in a higher regard than people we claim to care about.

Sometimes you don’t know good ideas are a bad idea until you try them…

And that’s how things turned out when we went exploring random gravel roads in the woods driving a two wheel drive Monte Carlo. It was an 1987 beast of a car with a full block v8 engine. That car was heavy.

But a friend and I figured we’d be just fine using it to cruise the back roads with it to a neighboring city. So down the gravel roads through the woods we went for hours. Only to end up at a locked forestry service gate about 100 yards away from the last road we needed to get into town.

We were low on gas and were looking at nearly a two hour drive back towards where we came in order to get home. But with it getting dark soon we started back the way we came, only to realize going down hill on the gravel road we came in on was much easier than attempting to go back up it, in a heavy two wheel drive car. In fact, try as we may, we couldn’t make it back up it.

So we were stuck. We couldn’t drive to the town we were closest to because of a locked gate and we couldn’t go back home the way we came because we couldn’t make it up the only gravel road that would take us up over the hill. All the weight of that engine was in the front and all the power was in the back tires that had no traction.

THINK!

We popped the trunk at the base of the hill and scavenged for as many heavy rocks that we could find. Loading as many as we could carry into the trunk. Then we went and let just a little bit of air out of each tire all the way around.

He looked at me, I looked at him. He’s like, “Think it’s gonna work?” I said, I dunno but I’m not about spending the night out here unless I have to. So with that, we took a run at it, engine revving and gravel flying everywhere. We came soooo close to the top. We were almost there. So we rolled back and did it again. And then again. And then again.

I lost count how many attempts we made, but ultimately it worked and we made it home. Once we got home and I looked at his car I noticed we had chipped the hell out of his paintjob with the amount of gravel we were throwing and the literally destroyed the back tires of that car. Those tires had chunks of rubber tore out of them and exposed cables. I’m kinda surprise they didn’t fail entirely tbh.

When I said I was sorry about his car…

He just looked at me and shrugged. Then said, “This is just metal and rubber. Nothing more. I’m just glad we made it home and didn’t have to spend the night out there.”

That wasn’t the last time I tore up a vehicle with that guy. He legit would leave a transmission in a ditch if he thought he could burn his way out of being stuck. And he would limp a rig back home just to tell a mechanic to pull everything out and put in all new shit.

To Kurt, things like cars, guns, plates, etc. were just tools. They never had any value other than what they afforded you to do and they sure never came above the people he cared about.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that he didn’t see the value in things. He definitely did. He went to great lengths to take care of the things he had. But he had a very healthy understanding that, you really can’t take things with you. And this life is about people.

Not Things. People.

So, while you are accumulating your Things try to remember that.

Copyright©2025 Jacob C. Larson All Rights Reserved

***Are the Things in your life carrying more value than they should? Are you putting some trivial dollar amount above doing something right or above being a good person? Maybe you should re-think things. Don’t be the type of person that would allow your friend to eat alone in a car. Don’t allow the trinkets we accumulate in life drive a wedge in your family. If you have the ability to improve someone’s life with something in your life that holds little monetary value to you, then do it. Don’t give it a second thought. Bless them if you can.

****Of course we can justify and make excuses for our actions. We can explain away our behaviors towards different things. But the truth remains, that in the overall scheme of things, none of this shit really matters and you can’t take any of it with you. So free your mind of it. Quit allowing yourself to be bound by the trappings of THINGS.