Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 108
‘Hoarding’ vs. ‘collecting’ — in the attitude
I
But at least you’ve got the stuff,
’m convinced Jay Leno is a hoarder. I mean, the man has some 300 right? You’re halfway there.
cars in his “garage.” And even
“Collector” cases to point:
though his stuff is all shiny and hisJay Leno, car collector (rich)
toric and operational, and he has a
Imelda Marcos, shoe collector
website devoted to it — is it really
(rich)
that different
Princes of Infrom the plastic
dia, jewel collecfast-food utentors (rich)
sils and condiment packages
“Hoarder” cases
that overflow
to point:
your
Great
Your Great
Aunt Sarah’s
Aunt Sarah, condiback bedroom?
DON’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY
ment hoarder (not
I think not.
so rich)
Now, clini Langley Collycally speaking,
the difference between “hoarding” er, famous hoarder (lived in squalor)
My garage (’nuff said)
and “collecting” is that collectors are
proud of their collections, keep them
I think that is sufficient to prove my
all spiffy, have tidy shrines devoted to them and will force people to hypothesis. But the third item above,
come over and look at them. Hoard- under collector cases, the jewel colers, on the other hand, feel guilty lections of Indian princes, brings up
about their collections, do not main- an interesting point. Jewel collectain them, store them in disarray and tions may also be called hoards, if
try to prevent people from getting they are found hidden away. Considwind of them (sometimes literally er the “Viking hoard of jewels” that
was dug up in Britain in 2007. So
getting wind of them).
I submit, Jay, that the only real now, there, a hoard is a good thing.
It just goes to show that, when
difference between collectors and
hoarders is money. If you have you are rich, everything you touch is
enough money, you keep your well- considered cool — well, that is, unoiled stuff as a pretty collection. If less you are Mel Gibson.
But what about those folks who do
you don’t have enough money, you
pile up your broken stuff in a hoard not have money, yet still manage to
maintain their collections in a neatly
and wait for the day that you do.
Jim
WALKER
organized fashion — and are proud
to show them to you, no matter how
odd they are?
Are they hoarders or collectors?
The following collections really
exist:
Graham Barker’s navel fluff
collection (That’s belly-button lint.)
Lydia’s collection of old AOL
CDs (I think I have a collection like
this.)
Phil Miller’s collection of sugar
packets (We should introduce him to
Great Aunt Sarah.)
In fact, all over this country, there
are quirky collections, museums and
points of tourist interest that, without the publicity, would definitely
fall under the shadow of hoarding.
Take for instance:
Bottle houses. Until the bottles
are neatly arranged in a wall where
the sunlight can pass through them
they are, well, trash – right?
The Asphalt Museum in Sacramento. Here you can spend hours perusing chunks of asphalt from different highways. Seriously? If located
somewhere else, this material would
be considered landfill.
The Museum of Burnt Food
(www.burntfoodmuseum.com). I expect the majority opinion would be
that hoarding chunks of burnt food
is no better than, and probably worse
than, hoarding plastic forks — that is
until you put the charred remains in
a museum. Then, it’s art.
And if the char marks look like Jesus, so much the better.
But having pride in your hoard
doesn’t necessarily mean you will
display it. Those Vikings were very
proud of their treasure, I’m sure.
But the reason they hoarded it, hid
it, was so it wouldn’t be taken from
them.
That means that whether a hoard is
considered a negative thing or a positive thing really arises from the owner’s attitude about it.
(Though being rich, Jay, sure helps
with the PR, doesn’t it?)
So, there you go. Let your freak
flag fly. Open a museum, and proudly stock it with your jars of bellybutton lint and your ketchup packets,
your dirt clods and petrified poop,
your stacks of old newspapers and
mummified cats. Let the world share
in your joy.
Certainly, if you are rich, you will
be viewed as cool for doing this —
or at least thought of as eccentric, in
a good way.
If you’re not rich, maybe you’ll be
labeled as crazy.
But either way you’ll get the junk
out of your house.
Jim Walker can be reached
at jwalker@the-signal.com. His
column reflects his own views, not
necessarily those of The Signal.
