The Collector

"I pick things up I am a collector"
Gravel is not the most glamorous driveway medium. As a kid, one of my friends had a huge gravel driveway loop. We would do time trials on our bikes, that was until I wiped my Huffy Desperado out on one of the vicious, rocky turns. Wearing shorts was really what turned it from an unfortunate mishap into an accident. Gravel driveways do have their advantages though. We would carve out roads and neighborhoods in them for our Matchbox Cars. Matchbox Cars are the first thing I can remember collecting. I had a little case with small plastic car shaped parking spaces. I would keep my cars nice and shiny and rarely ever made trades.

I eventually put my Matchbox aside, probably when Masters of the Universe came out. GI Joe and Transformers followed.  I never really had any of the cool vehicles or play sets.  My younger brother seemed to be better at acquiring them. This baffles scholars to this very day.  He had Castle Greyskull, the "Joe Base", Optimus Prime and The SR71 Blackbird. Maybe it was partially because he actually played with his toys. I did, but I think part of the fun was actually going to the store, hunting them down and getting them.
 

I always wanted to find the ones that were different or rare.  I didn"t JUST want He Man, I wanted Faker too. Why settle for goldilocks when you can have an all-blue, evil robot clone concocted by a sinister skull? Sure it was the same mold with a different paint job. My brother and I both already had He-Man (we hated to share I guess) and I had Faker too. Mattel, you wove your web of marketing genius and we were thoroughly entangled! You got the extra $3.50 from us!

This sort of logic transferred to the Transformers realm. I didn"t care about Optimus Prime or Megatron, I wanted Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. They were twin Lamborghinis! So similar, yet so different. I know what you"re thinking. GI Joe"s Tomax and xamoT. Eh! I was more of a Cobra Commander guy. I saved up the proof of purchases and sent away for Hooded Cobra Commander! And when I actually played GI Joe, there was no Destroy and Baroness political coup. Serpeantor was Cobra Commander"s bitch.
Over the years I have collected comic books, Legos, baseball, hockey and Magic the Gathering Cards (somehow I actually avoided Pokemon), CDs, DVDs and video game systems and when my kids come of age, they"re going to have an awesome set of Star Wars toys to play with.
I even got into the whole beanie baby crazy because my girlfriend (now my wife) really liked them. 

The Thrill is in the Hunt
Phone calls, catalogs and poring through newspaper circulars for deals have been replaced with ebay, and google.  Still the ultimate finds are at garage sales (and craigs list is the online version). The better the deal, the more satisfying.
What does this have to do with being a dad? One of the things I always avoided due to the extreme expense was model railroading. My dad had Lionel trains and I loved everything about them down to the way they smelled.
He didn"t really pull them out very often, but when he did, it was always a lot of fun.  Recently, my son got a Thomas the Tank Engine toy. You push its head and it goes.  I did not really think too much of it because it
terrified him.  Now that he"s a little older, he and his sister have been watching the Thomas show on TV. My wife took them to a train store and then they took me and showed me all the Thomas stuff.

Here we go again!

"And things, well things, they tend to accumulate"
Hey, that"s what Gladware, attics and ebay are for! 

"There are times, plenty of times I wish I could let it go"

But I"m sure I won"t. I"ll just keep hunting and collecting until I have "every last one every last one every last one every last one…"

What did you collect as kids?

What do you collect WITH your kids?