I collect books. In truth, I have read at least 60-70% of them. I guess that makes me smart, but I have yet to have any true proof of that either. I have about 20 scrapbooks of the various pieces of my life - they are filed on the lower shelf of the hutch my father built. If the house ever caught fire, it would be pets first, then my scrapbooks out the door with me. I have furniture that is hand-made by my father (a hutch, a TV cabinet, and a re-finished bureau); and I have re-finished bureaus I have done myself that are kind of cool. I could live without them, so I guess that makes them an official collection .... except for one of them has all of my bathing suits in it... four or five bathing suits and the collection of beach towels, and beach-specific flip flops and sunglasses. I guess if I have to leave for the beach emergently, I just have to go to One Room, to One Bureau, and pull open two drawers and I will be good-to-go. And yes, my vacation friends DO make fun of bathing suits "One for Each Day."
Then I have the Christine A. Memorial Lipstick collection. Yesterday I went through and tossed out anything over ten years old. Germs. Probably. Reality is, I only use one or two shades. I don't know how I got mixed up trying other colors and such and thinking I could branch-out. Just can't do it. I also have about six boxes of band-aids now. The last time I had a rash on my wrist a few weeks ago I was living in dread fear that it was never going to stop itching and spreading so I kept buying more band-aids. The rash is okay now but I have a heck of a lot of the darned band-aids left over. Especially since I figured out that the non-latex whatever in these new kinds of band-aids are what was causing my rash to spread. My wrist gets itchy just thinking about putting one on at this point!
The thing about Collecting Stuff is there's no real one thing I can blame it on. Back in 1987 when I got out of college, I had one goal in life: to buy my own dog. (Oh yeah, and to get a real job. I guess that was important.) I had that dog 22 years. Serena was awesome. She came to the office with me when I was in full time youth ministry, and came camping with me and so many other great adventures. She loved kids so she was a great youth ministry partner - and people adored her. She moved with me from Arizona, to Massachusetts, and finally to New York State. When I moved back East, my Uncle John took care of her for a few weeks while I searched for an apartment in New York that would allow dogs. Then, a decade later, when I moved from that apartment to a house, and she was aging, I got a SECOND dog because: a) I had the room; b) I needed to transition from losing one dog to gaining another; and c) if one dog was great, wouldn't two dogs be fabulous?!? Then, another ten years later, I bought my own house and started breeding dogs and ended up keeping a puppy from the first litter so I had THREE dogs. At one point, a couple returned the puppy they bought from me because, as they put it, they were aging (70's) and forgot how busy puppies are. They were afraid they'd trip on her and fall and hurt themselves or the dog. So briefly I had FOUR dogs. Never again, if I can help it, will I have four dogs intentionally. That is the short road to crazy. When you go to let them out potty in the morning, it's like the running of the bulls in Spain as they plow from one end of the house to the other with high speed, great zeal, and full bladders. That was more than I could handle and happily dog #4 went to her proper home with my friend's sister-in-law.
I collected birds for a while. That is where the "psychology of collecting" is most evident in my history. I started with one bird in Arizona. Then I realized there was money sitting on the table in New York if I started breeding cockatiels. Most especially because when I tried breeding hamsters, I only sold them for 75cents EACH to the pet store. Cockatiels were more lucrative: $35 each, at the time. Now, you would be hard-pressed to find one for under $200. Since the PETA crowd demonized pet stores for, imagine, selling pets, people patronized them less, and a lot of them closed-out their branch of extortion-for-domestic-critters.
I did even have the Bird Police at my house once. She thought she was clever, that I did not know who she was and what she was about. She communicated with me online about birds and asked if she could come to see my birds next time she was in the area. She came in with a camera in her hand. She made some blah-blah about how much she loved birds and asked if she could take pictures. Hey, my cages were clean and the birds were bright, beautiful, and healthy so I said, "sure." I was glad to see her go because I feel she was dishonest, I feel that she had some unfounded judgmental critique in her head as she left. I hope the door didn't boot her in the fanny as she left.
Now, at this point, I've got it in my head that I'd like to breed (which is a more noble term for "collect") Rosey Bourke parakeets which are pretty rare. I keep surfing the net (the technological part of the obsessing process), and looking at birds, and distances from my house, and cages, and kind of regretting that I sold two cages last year. Well, they were kind of big anyways. I had four cages going in that room at one point. It was kind of like, well, a collection .... You get the point.
This is not an adult problem, this collecting thing. And I am not blaming it on my parents. I am just saying that it has kind of been a subtle thing in the back of my head to do all of the things I wanted to do as a child, and didn't get a chance to do. I am under the perhaps mistaken impression that it is the one luxury of adulthood you get: to spend your money as you see fit. But I will tell you the oldest and most lingering collecting-process in my head...
My mother's god-daughter had this cool little Barbie-sized house to play with when we were growing up. Only it wasn't for Barbie and Ken. It was for these little toy mice that had dresses on. And I asked for that for myself, as in: "Mom can I have some of those mouse dollies?" And the answer was a bit more descriptive than a resounding, "No." It was: "no, I will not have you playing with rodents." As a kid, you never know why adults get all panties-in-a-wad about certain things. But this was one of those things. And I will tell you that now as I have taken to antique shopping and browsing these yard sales in barns across New York, I am waiting to see those mice. You would think that there wasn't just ONE set of them made, ever. And no, they were not the calico critter series - they are old mice. Mice that are at least 45 years old if I had to guestimate. I am not sure how the mouse house would look, I remember it being a tall and thin Victorian house, as opposed to being a ranch style. There was no garage to accommodate Malibu Barbie's sportscar. What will I do when I finally see those mice? Will I buy them? As a middle aged woman, do I actually need the mice dollies? I am not sure. What is the price on childhood happiness?
I found it ironic that last week my mother was on a rampage to clean up and lay down traps in someone else's basement that had mouse poop in it. Her war against the mice continues. Meanwhile, I walk through old barns on Saturday afternoons hoping for a glimpse of Henrietta and William, the Victorian mice that live only in my misty childhood memories at this point ...
I guess I am most grateful that I don't collect gross stuff, strange stuff, or dangerous stuff like other people do. Cases in point:
