My husband is a collector. I didn’t know it when I married him or my life might have taken a different turn. In fact his collecting of any and all things did not manifest itself until I began to notice a growing assortment of mostly inexpensive watches piling up on his dresser. From Mickey Mouse to turquoise studded stretchie bands, he did not discriminate. If it was at a flea market, or better yet, at K-Mart and it beckoned to him, he bought it. He’d look at it for what seemed like hours and thank his lucky stars he spotted this gem in time.
Okay, I said to myself. So he likes a variety of watches. Probably wants to make sure they go with his shirt, slacks, socks, whatever.
Then came the bolas. Since we live in Arizona, no one thinks it odd to wear a bola tie to work instead of a traditional men’s tie. So the collection of bolas took hold. He hung them in his closet and would caress and nuzzle them like a child might touch or nose dive his stuffed animals. Hubby assembled all kinds of bolas but they were mainly older, conservative ones, not your modern Picasso-styles with vibrant colors and geometric designs. Since we took loads of trips around Arizona, exploring the hinterlands, it didn’t take him long to rack up dozens of bola ties, which he wore to work on a rotating basis. I must say that some of the bolas were impressive and probably worth a lot in terms of artistry and materials. Zuni-style kachinas were my particular favorite, but he had only a few of them. The rest I didn’t care for even a little bit.
By this time I was reconciled to having a collector for a husband. Next on his list, which I abhorred, was a beard. He began collecting facial hairs, sculpting them, shampooing them. I admit I got jealous of the time and attention he paid to his beard. What next? I wondered. I didn’t have much time to wait. Lo and behold, and luckily for him, he had more space to spare in his work office. He turned it into a veritable nautical museum and even won himself an article in the Arizona Republic. Every inch of that office that wasn’t in file folders or on a desk was devoted to ships and the sea. He got himself a 100 gallon fish tank with tropical fish and a home for turtles. Service techs would come in and take away the smells and the clients would smile and say they never knew a lawyer who was crazy enough to have all this stuff. They actually didn’t say that. They thought it, but I could read their minds.
Since I never went to the office, I had no idea how it was consuming his time and his wallet. Employees laughed but secretly I knew they thought he was an addict and compulsive obsessive.
Then hubby turned the table on me and decided to claim his home exercise room as a showcase for, well, everything he was interested in: art, ironwood figurines, more nautical crapola like toy octopuses. You couldn’t even walk in there without tripping over dozens of objects d’art. He’d come home with bags full of stuff he bought at garage sales or trips to Disneyland. I could tell from the crazed look in is eyes that he was halfway to the booby hatch.
I’m telling you all this because I learned there’s only one thing that will stop a collector, and that’s the amount of space he has. There’s an expression that work expands to fill the time available. Well, collectors have the same problem. Their habit grows in proportion to the space they have.
Once in a while I caught my hubby eying my office and making comments like “I could make that room shine if you let me.” I knew what he had in mind, but over my dead body, he was going to claim more space. Things really began to get hairy when we bought another home in cooler climes–Flagstaff. I set down the rules even before the deed was signed. I said he was not going to extend his addiction to another house. It was bad enough that I had one house full of stuff that i would love to give to Goodwill. I wasn’t going to clutter another house up. I laid down the law and he blinked.
The only problem is now he’s gone back to his hair follicles. No. He gave up on the beard, but now he’s pining for a walrus mustache, and he’s having a real shot at tweaking and twirling one into being. I’d say in another month or two he really might have something besides dark hair sitting above his lip.
So Happy Birthday Old Man. You gave yourself a hell of a collector’s present.