The Tragic Death of Sayah Deal and The Realities of America’s Addiction to ‘Stuff’
When the police tried to smash the window of Sidney Deal’s car, he stopped them. It was a new car, a beautiful Nissan Altima black with chrome trim, which he could finally buy thanks to an $18 an hour job he had just started. That car was his baby. No way was Sidney going to let them damage it. The cops were not the only ones who wanted to smash his window either; a crowd gathered while he spoke to the cops. When they saw Sidney’s daughter curled up on the floor of the car in the backseat, they voiced their concern. But the car was running, and the air conditioning was on. Sidney switched it on when he ran back to get his phone, which is how he ended up locking the keys inside.
When Sidney's brother arrived, he ripped off his shirt and wrapped it around his knuckles to go for the glass. It was just past 3:00 p.m. in Las Vegas and 98 degrees, but Sidney wasn’t having it. He held his brother back from breaking the window and pointed out that the engine was still running. Sidney couldn’t afford a broken window. He couldn't afford a locksmith out of pocket either. That's why he rejected the cops’ offer to call a tow truck. Sidney was holding out for his mother's roadside assistance service to call him back to see if he could piggyback on her coverage. Meanwhile, his daughter Sayah had been alone in the car for 42 minutes, and she had stopped moving. Sidney claims he could still see her breathing and that she was napping on the floor.
In his Facebook photos, Sidney wears nice things. Gold chains with lettering, designer jeans with zips down to the knee, and thick gold watches. This car, Sidney's Nissan Altima, was more than just a ride to his new job. It was the best thing he'd ever owned. It represented a step up for Sidney. He couldn't pay for a broken window, a locksmith, or a tow truck, but he didn't need to. He left the engine running with the AC on; at least he's pretty sure he did.
When the Las Vegas Metro Police finally smashed the window, the inside of the car had reached about 170 degrees. Neighbors claim the cops have been waiting on permission from supervisors to damage Deal's car without his consent. Regardless, when they pulled his daughter out of the Nissan Altima, rigor mortis had set in. Sayah Deal, 21 months old, had passed away.
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Throughout history, there are stories of gold and silver miners having their boats capsized crossing the Atlantic - stories where miners would have survived if they emptied their pockets of the heavy minerals they carried. Or, in Sidney Deal's case, a daughter that would have survived if he’d been willing to damage his brand-new ride. These are some pretty extreme cases of object attachment.
You and I might have some unread books, a guitar you never play hanging on the wall, or a couch in a storage unit somewhere. But nothing like today's story, right? What if I were to tell you right now, according to our best data, that there are seven square feet of self-storage space in America for every man, woman, and child, which is an eerie number during covid since America is facing a housing crisis of epic proportions. Once the eviction moratorium comes up, seven square feet of storage space would be enough to cover every American if we all stood really still. To talk about our addiction to stuff and why it's so damn hard to let go, we have a few myths and a few tips.
Myth One: People who can't let go of their stuff are called hoarders. I'm not a hoarder; I just like shopping. It's called retail therapy, and it's perfectly healthy.
Joe: This might be the most tragic story we have talked about on this show, and the narrative does not really stray away from our opening. So, if you are sensitive to this kind of story, we advise skipping to the next episode.
Todd: It's a tough one for me. A little baby passed away, and it was so preventable. And to try to place the blame game…there was more than one adult there.
Joe: We won't spoil everything in the episode, but the thing we want to point out while we record this is that it is everyone. We found the most extreme example of somebody being attached to their stuff. But it is everyone; everyone is attached to their stuff. It's not a disorder, and Sidney wasn't a bad person. I saw many people online trying to slander him and say he was too attached to the car. But honestly, when you find pictures of him and look through his Facebook, he was not a bad guy. I truly believe it was just poor decision-making.
We are breaking down what's happening, chunking this up, and analyzing it like we're going through a crime scene. We want to figure out what went wrong, what the disorders are, and the psychology as to why this is not just a Sidney problem but an everyone problem. So first off, what's the likelihood that Sidney was suffering from a disorder of some kind? Originally, our narrative for today's story was going to be the miners who would go out, get silver and gold, and cross an ocean or river. And even in crisis, they would refuse to let go of the silver or gold they had pulled out of a mountain. It represented money value, and they were willing to die for it. So, this case is the modern version of that. Keep in mind that hoarding can be a problem, but we're going to kind of break down why this isn't necessarily a hoarding issue.
This is from Psychology Today and it's called “The Psychology Behind Hoarding.” They say hoarding is a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and about one in four people with OCD are also compulsive hoarders. So, if you have ever been diagnosed with OCD, there is a one-in-four chance that you are also stacking newspapers. Hoarding itself is, at its core, is an anxiety disorder. In fact, anxiety and depression usually come with being a hoarder. Neuroimaging studies have revealed that there are many commonalities between hoarders and emotional attachments. For instance, anxiety and attachment raise their ugly heads whenever you refuse to get rid of something. So, if you're looking at a giant stack of VHS tapes and you just can't get rid of them and you emotionally fight it when somebody suggests it, that's when you might want to think about getting a diagnosis.
Myth Two: So, there's exactly a coffins worth of used storage space for every person in America. So what? It's not like all that extra stuff is adversely affecting our lives, right?
Joe: I have one question for you. When does suspicion turn into broken glass? Like, how far would you let everybody in the crowd and members of the public suspect there was something wrong before you smash the window?
Todd: If anyone knew what was going to happen, they would have stopped it right that second.
Joe: I think that is the big takeaway for me. I think that if anyone had honestly suspected that the air conditioning wasn't on, they would have broken the glass.
Todd: I wish I could have been there and would have known that. Because I can't tell you that I would have acted any different if otherwise. After all, hindsight is 2020.
With that being said, not all Americans are hoarders. And yet America, as a whole, is a hoarder. Our country is a hoarder. For example, the annual industry revenue for self-storage (not warehousing) is now $39.5B. The number of storage facilities is in the range of 50K. If you look across the American landscape, 50,000 storage units. All in all, one in ten people have a storage unit where they're throwing their stuff into. If one in ten Americans wasn't paying a $90 tax every month, where could that money go, especially during the pandemic? I mean, if everyone had that money back right now, that's enough to get a new place. Here's another fun one: If we took all of the stuff out of storage and then scrapped it and turned it into recycling material, we could build houses out of the literal junk.
I will read some more statistics to make us feel awful about being hoarding Americans. There's a website called Becoming Minimalist, and they give some crazy storage stats. They said there are 300,000 items in the average American home. That's from the LA Times. They also say 25% of people with two-car garages don't have room to park cars inside them, and 32% only have room for one vehicle. So, if you've visited friends and family that never park their car inside, the reason is that there is too much stuff in there. Lastly, another resource called The Story of Stuff says that we consume twice as many material goods throughout our lifetime. Even more, Americans spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches than on higher education.
Myth Three: Does this thing spark joy? That's a true metric for how much we value our things, right? But what if everything we own sparks joy, which happens to be the case according to science.
Why are humans attached to stuff? In short, this isn't new, and that is ultimately what this episode is about. We want to not just sympathize and empathize with Sidney and understand why this happened. We also want to get into the psychology of why we have so much stuff in storage and why that's not always a bad thing. We have all done Amazon shopping and took on Black Friday sales, but what are the origins of hoarding and being attached to our stuff?
We're going to talk about why we have attachments as humans and how to deal with them. So first off, forgive me if I’ve ever badmouthed BuzzFeed on this podcast. In a Buzzfeed article interviewing Dr. Jessica Rasmussen, instructor of psychology at Harvard Medical, she had a lot of very interesting stuff to say about nostalgia and hoarding. And not just the disorder of hoarding, but also our attachments to things in general. She says that stuff produces a lot of positive feelings in people. It can spark feelings of safety and pride and give you a feeling of preparedness. Overall, half of it is basically survival gear. The other half is money, information, and sentimental items.
We also get the same positive experience from anticipating getting stuff. Consumerism has certainly increased over time, but according to this article, the satisfaction from getting the things we anticipate has stayed roughly the same. If you go back 50 years, people had half as much junk, but they had the same levels of self-reported happiness and the same levels of satisfaction as we do today. So, having more neater stuff and more readily available stuff from Amazon has not made us happier; it has been a level plane from the start. However, the emotional impact of having too much stuff. It negatively affects people because they are less likely to appreciate things, and research shows that having too much stuff doesn't increase the quality-of-life satisfaction. But it does take up space that you may want for something else.
Here's a good real-world exercise; if you want to understand how your life is affected by your stuff, go to every surface area in your house and ask yourself if those spaces belong to you or your stuff. When we say that we're not getting any more added life satisfaction from our things, it's because our things are taking up space that we're supposed to take up. Theirs is something called the endowment effect. The endowment effect is the idea that once we have an item, it is much more difficult to let go of it. Once something lands on our doorstep from Amazon, we value that item much more highly than if we didn't own it.
Now, there's a built-in mechanism to keep us from getting rid of things; there is a switch in our brain that keeps us from tossing old junk. When people think about letting go of something, it generates anxiety, sadness, cortisol, frustration, and anger. There is a real mechanism in the brain for negative emotions and stress when we consider getting rid of something that could be useful. Overall, it can be helpful if you stay aware of your ebb and flow of the in and out of your household. Keep in mind the space you want to keep open and tell yourself that this space belongs to me. It's not so much that this is a rule to clear your life of clutter; This is more just an awareness practice.
Joe: Sidney Deal is our modern gold miner going down to the bottom of the river with pockets stuffed full of gold.
Todd: You can replace a brand-new Nissan Altima. You can get another job, but you can't replace your daughter.
Final Thoughts
One solid piece of advice we can take away from today's studies is to build a system to keep track of the flow in and out of your house. You don't have to get rid of everything overnight. You don't have to back a dumpster up to your front steps or anything that dramatic. If you want a new lamp off Amazon, post your old one on Craigslist. Start with a one-to-one ratio and evolve from there.
We're wired to like our things, and that's not so bad. Imagine a primitive hunter who doesn't care about keeping a spear in working order. Imagine a carpenter who doesn't value his tools or a farmer who doesn't value his plow. In the same vein, how do we treat people who appear shabbier and kept when employers, hiring managers, and potential mates are all judging us based on our social-economic class? A huge part of that comes down to how we dress, how we express our financial prosperity, and what we drive. Quoting Twitter, we are all broke bitches trying to date someone slightly less broke than us.
Things demonstrate our wealth. Things show that we have class, style, and culture. Even if we never read, played, or wore the stuff in our closet, things make us happy both when we buy them and think about what we could do with them. In the 21st century, things come in the mail, and we don't even have to leave the house for our things anymore. And if the house is on fire, we won't leave without our things either.