This is a closet in the house I lived in as an adolescent. The area to the right of the door goes back about 18 inches deep. When I lived there, it had shelves built into that area. My dad and stepmom still live there, and I took this pic when I was there a couple of months ago.
My stepmom opened the closet to show me all of the honey the "bee lady" had sent her. You can see it there in the gallon-size plastic zip-locs on the second utility shelf. That's a lot of honey, and the bee lady is very generous! But here's the thing that hit me:
I became afflicted with the Collecting Bug when I was about 11 years old. I had horded coloring books and plastic dinosaurs as a young child, but I did not become obsessed with collecting things "forever" until I discovered comics and comic books and graphics.
At one time, my entire collection fit in the space marked "about this big" under the lowest shelf. And I thought it was a huge collection! Certainly it was the finest collection I had ever seen. Nobody I knew had such a massive collection of comics and art. Pogo books, Creepy and Eerie magazines, Peanuts and B.C. paperbacks - I had it ALL, man, and I was preserving this important collection for the ages!
Now I have about a billion books, but I finally eased up on being so damn anal about them when I (finally!) realized it was more important to let my son dig through them than to be such a prick about taking care of them.
By the way - I did not arrange the cans that way just for this pic. My stepmom is intensely organized.
3 comments:
"...I did not arrange the cans that way..." says the man who calls an off-angled seat cushion on the floor of his studio utter chaos.
She's a can Nazi!
I've always been very afraid of people who are that organized. I can always imagine them making lists of those who will not be missed. (That old homosexual, J. Edgar Hoover, was such a creature.)
I've been slowly assembling a complete set of all of the Steve Ditko written/illustrated Amazing Spider-Man comics. That would be The Amazing Spider-Man #1-38, Amazing Fantasy #15, the the two annuals that Ditko wrote and illustrated. It's slow going, and I've mainly been buying books in fair to fine condition. The thing I like about the collection is that I will let anyone read them. I don't give a rat's ass as long as the person wants to read them, and I don't care if it's a little bitty kid who wants to enjoy the books.
Yes, I know I could buy the hardback reprints of the trade paperback collections...but there's something about that old pulp.
eeT - I never said I WOULD not arrange the cans that way...
hem - collecting Amazing Spider-Man #1-38, Amazing Fantasy #15, the the two annuals that Ditko wrote and illustrated, sounds like a RICH MAN's hobby!
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