Objects of my affections

I don't classify myself as a materialistic person, but objects hold a lot of significance for me. That's the graceful way to put it at least. The less graceful way to put it is that I'm a packrat. I like to keep things for a long time, and I don't like letting go of them. A prime example is my stuffed animal collection. Between my two houses, I easily have 200 stuffed animals, collected from when I was a baby to now. I'm not a huge collector anymore. Actually I never really was a collector, I was a keeper. I took care of them, named them all, and played with all of them. I sobbed when, in fifth grade, I had lice and so the ones I played with most went into the wash. They didn't come out the same. Their fur got all matted. It was only recently that I was finally able to box some of them. Before that they inhabited my top bunk, several shelves, and, for the ones I was less attached to, a laundry basket at the top of my closet.

I'm not this way with just animals either. I have 4 or 5 shoeboxes full of notes, cards, letters, and the like from the past 17 years and 8 months of my life. If you give me a note or a letter, chances are, it's going to end up in a box. To my own credit, it's not as though I shove them in a box and forget about them. On the contrary, every so often when I'm feeling sentimental, I pull out a box or two or four (depending on what years I want to look back on) and read every word. They contain forgotten hopes and aspirations, friends who got left behind, pictures, and most of all, memories. I'm almost certain that my packrat tendencies can be traced to the fact that I feel as though I can go through all the seemingly meaningless objects scattered around my room, pick them up, and remember all about the time I got or made them.

I suppose keeping all my stuff can be problematic. After a while I simply stop having space, and while I hate to box things up to be forgotten in the garage, I get so claustrophobic from the clutter that things need to go away somewhere. My bookshelves are full and then some, my desk never has a clear spot on it, my walls are decorated with pictures and posters, my closet stuffed, under my bed full of boxes. I find comfort in the fact that I can pick up a book from my shelf and remember the first time I read it, and what I thought of it at the time. Similarly, I love picking up odds and ends and figurines and remembering where I got them, who from, and so much more.

Just the act of feeling something familiar is extremely comforting to me. I like to do things with my hands, so I normally have a rock or two from my collection in a pocket. Feeling something, smooth or rough, hard or soft, is so concrete and real. I run my hands against walls, touch ceilings, feel the floor against my feet. It helps center me sometimes, and other times it just provides a certain infallible comfort. I recently came across my old collection of Magic: The Gathering cards. I got my cousin Thomas into the game, and so I now have a mix of the old and the new. I'm well aware that some of my cards, since they are the very first editions, could be worth lots of money. I'm also aware of the fact that giving them to Thomas would probably make more sense than keeping them for myself.

However, something in me tells me to hang onto them. I feel as though there are so many things that can be taken from us that we need to hang on, literally, to what we have. Good health or fortune can never be guaranteed. People in our circles shift and change, and we change as well. So why not keep things from your childhood?

I suppose that someday I'll have a spouse and a family and I simply won't have space for all of my things. And if it comes down to selling them or putting them into storage where I'd never see them, I'd probably sell them, since I plan on going into the theatre business, where you need every penny you can scrape just to get by.

For now though, I see no reason to let go of the things that make me happy. Even if that makes me a packrat. Some of the most significant events in my life can be tied to certain objects, and that makes them invaluable, not necessarily in monetary worth but in emotional worth. I keep playbills and ticket stubs because I can hold them and look at them and remember.

And remembering is so much infinitely better than forgetting.

Cheers,

-T.A.D.