by Sal Rodriguez
I never set out to be a collector. I think I was just born that way. If I love one of something, I could love 100 of something. Or 1000. Sure, it’s action figures now (and lots of diecast cars) but who knows what it’ll be in 20, 30, 40 years. After all, it wasn’t always figures...
As a little boy, I collected stuffed animals. I’d introduce them to one another upon their arrival. It was important. I didn’t want any of them to feel left-out or unwelcome. I don’t know how I was able to have so many stuffed animals as a kid. My mother used to go on and on about how poor we were. “Poverty-stricken”, was her expression. Yet I had lots of stuffed animals. Lots.
DON'T LOSE YOURS: I then turned to marbles. I was never good at marbles. To this day, I’m not even sure how one is supposed to “play marbles”. But I had plenty. And I wanted perfection. Once they were chipped, they were done. I sought-out the prettiest, clearest, and most colorful. In hindsight, I should have gone into the diamond or gemstone industry, because I’ve got quite the eye. (Even recently, I spotted a blooper in a friend’s independent film that neither director, producer, editor, nor masses of viewers had noticed.) Trust me, I can find mistakes and design flaws in many things.
I don’t know how or why I got into keychains. But until my mid-teens, I had a ceramic jar with dozens of key chains. Silver comes to mind. I also enjoyed leather and handmade ones. I went to summer camp and made lanyards, regretful of the fact that I had only one set of house keys. I soon realized that I could separate my house and bicycle keys to utilize two different key chains! Friends would return from vacation and bring me touristy and commemorative key chains. I’ve still got about twenty key chains. And only about four sets of keys with which to actually use any of them. Whenever I can, I find places to hang or clip them. One fell-off my laptop bag the other day and was lost. I was so pissed!
I can tell you exactly how I got into pin buttons. In my early 20s, a friend at the gym made angel wing pin buttons, donating some of the proceeds to charity. I bought one of her angel wing pin buttons and attached it to an old work shirt that hung in my closet.
And I just kept adding to it and adding to it and adding to it. I’ve got about eighty pin buttons on that old work shirt. A recent addition was a hand-crafted pin button from a local collectibles store, featuring a spooky image of The Exorcist’s Pazuzu. When they combine a horror movie image with a pin button, I’m a sucker.
STUCK ON YOU: If there’s one thing I hate as much as empty, blank walls, it’s empty, blank appliances. Refrigerator magnets. How boring is the outside of your average refrigerator? I especially love magnets that I’ve picked up in my travels: a camel from the Middle East, a kanji letter from Asia, a tiny Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. The inside of my refrigerator might be dull, but not the outside. And the good news is, there’s still plenty of room! I’ve even made my own refrigerator magnets by simply gluing hardware store-bought magnets onto any little item. Voila! Instant appliance accessory.
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Worth mentioning is my former shoe collection, at one time having as many as seventy pairs of shoes. And my collection of foreign currency, with my pride and joy being a now defunct Iraqi bill, featuring the likeness of Saddam Hussein. So, action figures or no action figures; I’m collecting something. Or everything. Oh, and find me on YouTube.
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