{"id":413,"date":"2013-03-14T12:04:03","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T19:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roomforapony.net\/?p=413"},"modified":"2013-05-24T09:46:40","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T16:46:40","slug":"from-whence-the-drive-to-collect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/?p=413","title":{"rendered":"From whence the drive to collect?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I admit i have a bit of a \u201cthing\u201d about collecting. There\u2019s a-whole-nother category that lies somewhere between packratness and hoarderliness, and I\u2019m in it.\u00a0 The people in this category are called \u201ccollectors\u201d instead of packrats or hoarders because they collect things in a systematic, purposeful and orderly way, display their collections in a proud and dignified manner, and often spend a lot of money on them. They are driven by something they all have in common, a condition I\u2019m hereby naming collectivitis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(Note that I\u2019m not bailing out of admitting I\u2019m a packrat. I overlap in both categories. If you recall, I\u00a0explained earlier<\/a>\u00a0why I don\u2019t place myself in the hoarder category.)<\/p>\n

My earliest memories of these urges are from when I was eleven and began to collect bottle caps. I amassed shoeboxes full of them. Precociously, I recognized way back then that if I was going to indulge this compulsion, I\u2019d better pick something small<\/em> (we moved a lot) and cheap<\/em> (my income was …. an occasional peanut). For that I deserve a TON of credit — which, by the way, I never get.<\/p>\n

Certain people, such as the one I live with, might express a little gratitude once in a while that at least I\u2019m not like a guy I used to know who collected office machinery — and I don\u2019t mean staplers. I mean xerox machines and the like. Besides the money he doled out for them, he had to rent a warehouse for their storage. His wife resented it horribly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

how would you like a warehouse full of THESE?<\/p><\/div>\n

In light of that, How can you really find fault with pen caps and sock hangers?<\/p>\n

But never mind. I\u2019m over it. For my own clarity of thinking, I\u2019m taking the brave step of purging these collections from my environment. Fortunately I don\u2019t have to throw them away. I can give them to SCRAP<\/a>, which makes it a lot more bearable. There they\u2019ll capture the heart of some other loon, and be adopted forthwith — thereby assuaging my abandonment guilt.<\/p>\n

I realize this new, emancipated Self means that from now on, whenever I find a pen cap, or acquire a sock hanger, I\u2019ll be tossing those babies right into the rigid plastics recycling bin in our garage. I\u2019ve been mentally practicing doing this, and I\u2019m fine with it.<\/p>\n

Years ago I got rid of my huge collection of tiny tasting spoons (see blog banner, above) and now, in my new incarnation, after tasting something at the deli I toss the spoon ruthlessly into their recycling bin, with a debonair, nonchalant \u201cOff with its head!\u201d<\/p>\n

See? People can<\/em> change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I admit i have a bit of a \u201cthing\u201d about collecting. There\u2019s a-whole-nother category that lies somewhere between packratness and hoarderliness, and I\u2019m in it.\u00a0 The people in this category are called \u201ccollectors\u201d instead of packrats or hoarders because they collect things in a systematic, purposeful and orderly way, display their collections in a proud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82,24,64,65,81,12],"tags":[84,66,15,14,26],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":514,"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roomforapony.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}