You know, I’ve often wondered why, when you have more than
one ‘thing’, people like to think that you are now a Collector of that thing. I
figure, though, it’s because now that you Collect ‘something’, it makes it
easier for those people to buy you gifts.
AND, of course, one day someday, because it’s a Collectible, it will
(might) be worth lots of money.
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| I managed to combine 2 collections in one |
Think about it. Companies subtly, yet invasively, perpetuate
that Collector urge in people. Cows,
roosters, cars, trains, Mickey Mouse, thimbles, spoons, salt and pepper sets, rocks,
stamps, beer cans and/or bottles and just plain old pop bottles or old bottles. Coca Cola, Pepsi-Cola, KIK Cola. A & W Root Beer. Moustache cups, snuff boxes, perfume bottles. It's endless and expensive. AND, if you slip over the edge, just a leetle bit too far, you get to star on Hoarding: Buried Alive.
I remember as a rebellious teen, I took up smoking. Hmmm, how to make sure my snoopy mom didn’t
find the contraband? I started
collecting empty cigarette packages, of course.
I used my dad’s old, khaki coloured, metal army footlocker to store my
collection in. It didn’t take my mother
very long to find my stash though. I’m
not totally sure how she figured it out but I’ve always thought that one of my three sisters ratted me out. That was the end of that collection.
Tins used to be one of MY favourites and I had a lot of
them. It started out that most, if not
all of my tins were for food stuffs; crackers, cookies, baking soda, Oxo. Chocolate, of course, is a big one. Quality Street is one of the prettier ones.
Then, don’t ‘They’
come out with small power tools in a tin.
Blew me away to see that and I actually have one. It’s a dual purpose gift – useful and
satisfies the tin collecting itch.
Despite being determined to re-home my tins, which probably
numbered over 100 (I never counted), slowly and surely over the 4+ years since
I decluttered before moving, I have once again started ‘collecting’ things in
tins or just the odd, interesting tin. A
few I actually saved when I was thinning out the herd - just a couple of my favourites. Somehow, I think that by keeping just a few, it
created the catalyst to still being a
Collector. Maybe it’s considered a soft
addiction? Hmm, I wonder if there is
rehab for that?
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| I think
the wire ones are trying to pull/push the plastic one out of the nest |
Collecting anything kinda reminds me of the old wire coat
hangers. Didn’t it seem like all of a
sudden you had hundreds of them in the hall closet, when just the night before,
there were only 3? What happens at
night, in the dark, in the closet? The
wire hangers get together, maybe a ménage a trois, creating all those instant
offspring which promptly come tumbling out of the closet as soon as you open
the door. AND, of course, they are so hopelessly
tangled up, that they form, in some bizarre way, an abstract sculpture, which
you’ll be able to sell on e-bay or Amazon for hundreds, if not thousands of
$$$$$$. You just know it will.
Have you noticed though that wire hangers seem to be
disappearing? Which will only add to the
collectability of them, as sightings become rarer. Maybe it’s the greenhouse effect? My theory is that it’s the car manufacturers
which have created this scarcity of wire hangers. After all, as soon as ‘They’ changed the design of the locking mechanism on cars, to the
now, new sleeker-looking design located on the side door panel, instead of on the
top of it, even if you could find a wire hanger to try and slide through the
miniscule window opening ‘cause you’ve left the keys in the ignition and locked
yourself out, it won’t help. You can’t
even see what you’re doing ‘cause of the angle of the dangle and even if you
could, there is no way in hell you’ll be able to hook it on the lock to pull it
open. I’m thinking that the car industry
revamped the lock so that it would be harder for car thieves to use this
time-honoured method to break into your car but I happen to know that car
thieves used a jimmy, not a wire coat hanger.
It’s a lot faster. Nowadays,
they’re even more sophisticated and use modern technology to get a read on your
wireless key signal, trap it and then pop the locks open the moment your back
is turned and steal anything in your car that isn’t nailed down, including
your new leather gloves, which was a treat to yourself and your kid’s french
homework. WTF? I almost always lock the doors manually,
thereby increasing the odds of locking my keys in there. Thank goodness Roadside Assistance was
invented.
We have come sooooooooo far from the lowly wire coat hanger. And of course, along with the advances, comes
the financial cost. A car ‘key fob’
costs around $250.00 at the dealer.
Around $70.00 for a generic one.
Whatever happened to a ‘normal’ metal key, which you could get made at
practically any store which sells hardware, for $1.98? I used to have a couple of spare key sets
(one for the house and one for the car) stashed outside, just in case. Now I can’t afford to do that and even if I
could, how would those electronic marvels survive the temperature fluctuations
and extremes of our Canadian weather, even if sealed in a Ziploc baggie,
secreted in a tin, then buried in the garden?
And then try to find it under 4 feet of snow.
I digress. So even
when you think you’ve beaten back the demons of being a Collector, have you
really? Or, is the urge still there,
waiting for you to forget that you’re not Collecting anymore? It’s insidious. Just when you think it’s safe to ‘go out
there’ again, you know, deep down in your heart and that teeny, tiny little
region of your brain, I think the
Amygdala, that it’s not. It’s just like
being an ex-smoker – that first drag after having quit for a while, whether
days, months or even years, may make you feel a little sick but the second one
is easier and by the time you’ve had 3 or 4 puffs on your friend’s ciggy,
you’re hooked again. You just won’t
admit it for a while. Soon you’re
smoking OP’s (bumming off of Other People).
Pretty soon you’re buying your own again. These days, I’m told it costs about $12.00 a
pack. I’m soooo glad I stopped smoking
almost 15 years ago. It’s the only way I
could afford to buy a house and make the mortgage payments! And buy my tins. And my Mickey stuff.
