Collection Connexion

My office-mate gave me a kinder egg the other day and guess what was inside…. a PUZZLE. Who the frick wants a puzzle? I want a toy, you know, with the little picture directions that you put together yourself. My favourite part was always adding the stickers, which could be facial features if it was a creature, or racing stripes and a license plate if it was some sort of vehicle. I’d always try my best to put them on perfectly aligned with the carefully handcrafted plastic contours. I hated it when part of the sticker would fold over the edge, even just a little bit. The racing stripes were the worse for that because they were long and needed extra precision for success. I also didn’t like the toys that didn’t snap together properly and always fell apart. I threw them out after a short period of time anyway, not really a collector for such things.

I did collect thing as a kid. Like stuffed bunnies. My favourite animal during my youth was a rabbit, and my favourite toy was a rabbit, and I read books about having a rabbit as a pet, and I knew about different kinds of rabbits (like angora that you brush and their super soft hair is ready for collection…..). I never did get a rabbit, there was discussion with the rents about it, but it never materialized. I had to make do with the rabbits at my friends houses, but they weren’t the nicest rabbits, some of them outdoor pets.

I also collected pennies. My grandma gave me and my brother these loonie shaped plastic piggy banks this one time, and I mean, they were huge. So it became my goal to fill it with pennies. I had a few other piggy banks going on at the same time, one in which I stored all the pre 1970 pennies along with the memorial quarters and loonie-bins and stuff. So now I have this 10 kg loonie shaped piggy bank full of copper and fake copper. Actually, I’m proud of it.

Currently I collect mini art. That is post cards, greeting cards and little posters of art that I like. Right now my mini art collection is dominated by the Group of Seven (with a little Tom Thompson) but I also have a few artistic photographs from Alberta and BC and a few things that I picked in Scotland. I love the mini art because it lets me own the art that I love, and it also isn’t hard to store or display. I use tacks mostly.

For all of undergrad (starting 2^nd semester of 1^st year) I collected trident gum wrappers. It really annoyed me when they started doing the cross over into chicklet style gum, but you can still get the paper wrappers when you buy the super packs. I collected the wrappers to make a gum-wrapper chain, which my dorm-mate taught me how to do in first year. Now the chain a quite a few metres long and I feel it represent my life through undergrad. Or something. I could make a whole mushy explanation about growing and expanding beyond who I was before, making my leap into actual independence. But I won’t, because really, its just a gum-wrapper chain. I stopped adding to it after graduation, I decided it was time to move on.

I could also tell you that I ‘collect’ earrings, but seriously, we all know what that’s all about and it’s not a bona fide collection. Ok. That’s all for today.