collecting

my house smells like clean laundry again... but that's not what i'm here to tell you.

on the way to do other household necessity stuff (like banking and grocery shopping) this evening, we happened by a comic store. and my sweetheart decided we needed to go in to get some idea what his "collection" might be worth.

the store stank of stale cigarette smoke (that can't be good for the value of the priceless artifacts found within the store's reeking walls), boxes of action figures and baseball cards stacked precariously, sleeve upon shiny sleeve of plastic ensconced comic books hung from the walls... and my sweetheart grew a new persona.

at least, it was new to me... he was suddenly collector-guy, talking shop, cracking jokes about such-and-such comic #94, and moaning over the recent early demise of an artist whose work he admired.

when the shop owner realised that i was not taking part, he tried to draw me into the conversation by asking what i collected, saying something along the lines of everybody collects something... maybe dolls or something?

and so i have been trying to think if i ever truly collected anything. not just had a few items of something that accumulated over time because people noticed you had one and thought you might like another for your collection... but something i was passionate about, that i loved so much i had to have more.

maybe i did, at one time... i know i had some cow stuff for a while, but it seems to me that i kind of said once that i liked cows and then they were rained upon me. but i don't remember ever having my special collection of something precious.

all the things i can think of that i ever deliberately accumulated were things to be used. i don't remember ever buying something that i loved and then putting it away so that the sunlight wouldn't damage it, or dirty fingers decrease it's value.

maybe i'm just not a collector.

but then, i suppose i could find a few things that i have collected and put away somewhere safe, where nothing could touch them... old loves, old losses, old wounds, old memories.

i wonder if anyone would want them, if i were to take them out of their time-proof protective covers and put them on auction to the highest bidder.