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I was watching a TV show the other night about this guy who had a “mental problem” of collecting stuff. This was literally stuff, not to be confused with collectibles (which is stuff that the world deemed worthy of being hoarded). I don’t recall exactly what the stuff consisted of, but it was basically things like beer cans of the world, or lawn equipment. Even though he had four Toro mowers, whenever there was a yard sale, he was there. He managed to fill up the house, sheds and grounds with his stuff, and his wife had given him the heave ho. I realized that my reaction to this was not the appropriate “what a loser,” but basically “the poor guy.” There was a lot I could empathize with here. I, too, have trouble throwing stuff out. If something is in any remote stretch of the imagination useful, it has a home. I’m not as bad as him in actively seeking out my 20th copy of an item, but if one comes my way, I won’t say no.
I’ll be riding by a house with a bike in the trash on my way to work, and think “now there could be some good parts there.” Never mind the fact that I already have two frames laying around and enough parts to recreate a couple of bikes from their ashes. It’s a good thing we don’t have a cell phone or Susan would be getting some early morning calls “Trash day in Chelmsford, fine looking mountain bike on Proctor Road.” Actually, another good reason for not having a cell phone is that after trying this a couple of times, I would surely be divorced.
The guy in the show used to cruise yard sales on a regular basis despite the fact that his front yard looked like a permanent yard sale. Now, I don’t do that, but I am seduced by the siren song of the mail order catalog. Catalog will show up (which they do about every week), and although I realize that I have enough supplies in my garage to last for years, I think I’ll just have a look. Inevitably, I’ll find something on sale that is just too much of a bahgain, as the say in Massachusetts, to pass up. So I’ll buy four of whatever, since a deal like this may not come again. A few days later, my package arrives with my parts and ... yet another catalog, and the cycle starts again. The other problem is that being of advancing age, my memory is not quite what if was. So, I end up ordering the same stuff again and again. At one point I counted ten cyclocomputers in stock. That actually worked out OK, since I bought the absolute cheapest ones made, and they only lasted for a few hundred miles each.
What really gave me pause the other day was I realized Eric Ferioli gives me stuff. Now Eric’s a renowned scavenger, plying his trade at the Wellesley dump, and if I am happy to get stuff that even he deems useless, what does that say about me? Maybe I’m not all that different from the TV guy after all.
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