People collect paintings, which can cost from $1 to millions of dollars. There are collectors of baseball cards, coins, stamps, pens, books, records, Barbie dolls, GI Joe’s, Star Wars paraphernalia, flags, salt n’ pepper shakers, coffee mugs, alcohol jiggers, Royal Doulton and Wedgewood figurines, telephones, and to a lot of people, anything antique.
There are some individuals who collect eyeglasses frames, and some goofy ones who collect old AOL start-up disks.
Just to show you how big collecting is, go watch the The Antique Show, shown locally in Toronto at the PBS channel. You will see the range of stuff people bring in from their parents' and their own collections.
And at the Lawrence Market down Front and Jarvis streets, antique (old) sellers make brisk business on Sundays selling knick knacks and genuines.
As a kid I tried my hand at collecting. Not baseball cards but what is colloquially called “teks” in Filipino. Teks are the size of a baseball card but instead of the picture of a favorite baseball player, they contain scenes or episodes of a komiks story, written in Tagalog.
Kids would buy their first batch of “teks” from a sari- sari store (convenience store), and then play with other neighbourhood kids in a game called “pitik,” to win more “teks.”
Teks became my first and last stab at collection. But throughout my life, what I've collected are memories. Memories of my childhood, my teens, my adult years, my family.
Memories can come suddenly at any time - when I smell a certain scent, hear a certain tune, watch old movies, visit a certain place, see a fleeting glimpse of a thing – a car, a bridge, an old house.
Hanging on to just the good and beautiful memories and burying deep inside the bad and hurtful ones are every man's natural defense against emotional annihilation.
And always, the memories are of the past. The future is yet. Priceless.
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