I’m sneaking around behind my girlfriend’s back. She knows I’m a collector, obviously, but she doesn’t know about my recent additions. She doesn’t know I bought another ¼ scale NECA figure. You can’t just hide a ¼ scale in a paper sack. You can’t pass it off as another pair of shoes. It takes a commitment to buy it and another to bring it in the door and find a place for it. And how was I supposed to get it in the door anyway? My girlfriend is sitting right over there…
If you’re a collector, or just someone who has too much stuff (or not enough room, depending on how you look at it), you probably have things in your car. For the last few years my car is somewhat of a storage facility on wheels. Let’s leave it at this: If I want to carry a passenger I have to move stuff. Luckily I happened to be cleaning out my car that day. My girlfriend was at the dining room table, doing paperwork. I had a towel in my car from when she and I went to exercise at the park a few days earlier. Perfect!
I wrapped the towel around the box, trying not to reveal its shape. She’d never know! Not only was I able to get it into my apartment but I was able to get it through the living room, into my bedroom, and to the farthest area near my walk-in closet. She never goes near my closet. Why would she? She doesn’t have clothes or anything over there. There’s no good reason for her to be anywhere near the closet. It seems to be the one area of my apartment that is truly mine.
And there sat House of 1000 Corpses’ Captain Spaulding for two days as I considered his fate. Or maybe just considered which shelf to place him on. Because there’s no way any ¼ scale NECA figure I own is staying in its box. The only ¼ I have still in its box is an original Halloween movie Michael Myers. And come October he’ll be set free in a special seasonal YouTube video review. So I had to get Sid Haig out of the box and on the shelf, and *discard the box without my girlfriend knowing it. (*By discard I mean take it to my storage facility. And by my storage facility I mean my friend’s storage facility that I can access.)
Why go through all this you ask? Why not just tell my girlfriend that I bought another ¼ scale figure? After all, I’m my own man; I make my own way and I earn my own pay. If I want to get another figure (gosh darn it) I’ll get another figure. Well that’s precisely what I'm doing. I’m guessing my girlfriend and I have entered into the don’t ask, don’t tell phase of our relationship. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. And perhaps she’s thinking the same thing - what I don’t know won’t hurt me either. So what’s she up to when I’m not looking? Who cares! Captain Spaulding now stands in the space next to ¼ scale Iron Maiden’s Somewhere in Time Eddie. My girlfriend hasn’t noticed, and I ain’t sayin’ nothin’.
.....We also located another "Pigs Is Beautiful" version of Capt. (Cult Classics).
Sal Rodriguez pounds the pavement in Los Angeles as an actor, comedian, and writer. He began collecting figures upon discovering UFC and WWE figures by Jakks Pacific. He lives with his two cats, Fluff Daddy and Little Mister, and over 2,000 action figures. Subscribe to his YouTube channel.