Collectibles

When I was young, I had this bad habit of collecting stuff from places I visited. My innocent self felt that they would serve as fond memories of places (or interesting things that I had done) in my older age.

But now that I am old, I have realized that all these trinkets, ticket stubs and maps of places are nothing but an absolute waste of space. Not only do I never open them to “re-live those memories” but also, I have ended up having far too many memories. They now occupy so much space in my cupboard that my present is in danger of lying on the floor.

Every time that I found some interesting collectible, I just dumped it into this area “for staring at it longingly in the future”. The problem with this area was – now I had no clue what was there in it. It had become so unmanageable, that I dreaded to venture into it. Anyway, today I finally dawned my mask and off I ventured where no man has gone before.

Now the place where I live in is generally very humid. So everything that is not touched for a while gets covered in mold-like stuff. I am sure if I decide to sleep for a week doing nothing, I too would be covered by some mold with some mushrooms growing off me. Anyway, after hours of digging around through the fungi covered rubble, I figured that there was not much that I wanted to hold on as memories going forward. The stuff I liked was already damaged, and the rest was not worth keeping. Yeah I know I am cold-hearted, but I figured there was no point keeping them just so that I throw them off later someday (that someday never comes!).

So what was the weird and interesting stuff I held on so long? Lots and lots of refrigerator magnets. I had so many of them that to actually put them all, I would probably have to buy a few fridges. Then there were ticket stubs of amusement park rides, places of interest, bus tickets, train tickets, air tickets, boat tickets etc. And then dozens of press-a-penny souvenirs. I also found a few single chopsticks (mind you – they don’t form a pair!) and a few dozen wine bottle corks (At one point in time – I envisioned myself dabbling in cork-art). If this was not enough I had stones (yeah stones!), dried leaf samples and wilted flower samples! The most interesting bits that I found was – I had a Matryoshka doll that I bought at this fort. Unfortunately as of writing this blog post, I already managed to break the doll into pieces while trying to open her up.

All said and done, I am left with no more memorabilia. Now all I have is fond memories and lots of fungi all over my clothes.