Stuff and Nonsense

I want scratch and sniff stickers. I used to have a bunch of them. I mean, granted it was second and third grade, but I had a sticker collection with all kinds of cool stuff. I had holographic pink ballet slippers and a pretty shiny rainbow thingamabob. But the scratch and sniff were my favorite. I distinctly remember my pickle and root beer ones the most. Now, though? I wouldn't have the faintest idea where to find a smelly sticker. Maybe they went the way of Garbage Pail Kids and plastic charm bracelets. Maybe they were recalled for high levels of lead. Maybe kids just think they're dumb.

I've had a bunch of collections over the years, so let me share a little bit of my accumulated (pun intended) wisdom. Unless you really, REALLY love what you're collecting, NEVER tell anyone that you collect it. Not unless that's all you want to get for every gift-giving occasion for the rest of your life. Letting your penchant for a certain something out of the bag basically just hands everyone in your life an excuse to never think of what to buy you again. You like hummingbirds? Guess what you're going to get forever?

I know because in high school I really liked frogs. They were everywhere when I was growing up in Louisiana but there were none in California, where I moved. So I started collecting them, maybe as a homesick thing. Just cute little figurines, wooden or pewter or whatever. But then word got out and for years, that's all I got from friends and family, even when I outgrew the collection. I got a handmade frog quilt (still cool), a frog jewlery box, plastic frogs, frog shirts, a Buddha frog. It rained frogs in my life until I finally begged for mercy at the age of twenty-five. "Let's ALL move past the frogs. Please!"

My collections are much subtler now. I didn't even realize I was collecting in some cases until I sat and considered what I spend time acquiring. I collect books. Lots and lots of books. Hundreds in storage, dozens in my home. Slowly I'm beginning to build a subset of super cool books: I have an original edition of Huckleberry Finn (whoa!) and a SIGNED copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. I think I'd like to expand my collection but only with books that resonate with me emotionally, so I imagine that my pile will grow slowly. That's a particularly expensive habit.

It's better than some of my collections from years past, though. In fifth grade, I collected fingernails. Don't read on if you're easily grossed out. My fingernails grow really long, really fast. I keep them short now but for years they were super long and that was kind of my trademark. I'm talking an inch long, in many cases. And when my really long ones broke, I would keep them. I had spent a lonnnnng time with them as part of me, you know. I think in high school I finally figured out that it was a bizarre thing to do and they went in the trash. That particular quirk makes a cameo appearance in my recently completed novel, because heaven knows, you just can't make stuff like that up.

I've had other less disturbing collections, too. Buttons. Shoes. Empty Pringles cans (sour cream and onion). Red M&Ms. Wheat pennies. Foreign coins.

But as I grow older, I become less attached to things. What I like to pull out and dust off and admire now are memories, experiences, stories, adventures past. So that's the collection I aim to grow for the next seventy years. I expect I'll be rich indeed when I'm done.

*P.S. If you didn't collect your compliment on Saturday, you can pick it up below.