The Collection
I wouldn’t consider myself a hoarder, but I do collect things. Some things are useless, like the inner circles of Dannon Yogurt caps, which I collected in college. I’m pretty sure I don’t have those anymore. Some things are connected to me as a teacher, like plan books and some textbooks and manuals that I used when I taught. If any of that curriculum returns, I’ll be ready.
There are old computer disks and programs from the early days of 3-inch floppy disks. None of which will actually work on any living computer I own. They all reside in their own special place down in the basement… somewhere. I occasionally run into all these items in my basement meanderings. I dust them off, and occasionally question why they are still there. I do realize that someday they will have to find a new place to reside, outside of my purview probably due to a move somewhere to a smaller abode or to my wife deciding that enough is enough.
There are other things that I have kept that have a little more meaning to me such as written works mostly created by students I taught. Some of which I have been able to scan and make available to those same students that created them, some 30 or 40 years later.
If we leave the basement and move upstairs to the loft where I do a lot of my writing, you will also find pictures and hard copies of my writing. I not only have all of the physical pictures and digital ones that I’ve taken but boxes of photos that I’ve inherited from my parents who have passed on. A lot of those photos, some of which are in black and white, are of places and people I do not know that date back to the 1920s – 1950s. It is impossible to identify the places and people in them, but they are a reminder of my history and ancestors. Included with these pictures are also documents of my ancestors, including old address books, newspaper articles, birth and death records, my great-great grandmother’s handwritten dowry, passenger lists, letters to my parents from Germany, and more.
And then there is my writing. Though most everything that I’ve written in the past 40+ years is typed and saved on my computer, I like having hard copies of my works, that I place in looseleaf notebooks organized by years. It is fun to read some of my early writing, especially my teaching journals, which on occasion I share with other teachers. I’ve also shared some of my post-teaching binders with friends so they can enjoy my writing and see how varied my mind can be. Someday, it is possible that I may look through all of these writing pieces and try to put together a collection to publish. That’s more of a dream than a reality, but you never know.
All these collections define who I am and how I got to be here, whether it be the collection of all my checkbook ledgers since graduating from college or all the appointment calendars that tell the story of my life.
“Do you remember, when we went to that restaurant in the Catskills?”
“Let me check my calendar, I think it was in 1976 or 77.”
You never know when those might come in handy.
Just last week, I sent my son all the notes I took from my History of American Education class back in 1970. My son works for a university library as one of their metadata librarians and is into history. So here was a primary source of what college students were learning back in 1970, which he finds relevant as he can compare it to what sources are used now and what is being taught today. And I still had all my notes. Can’t wait to see when I’ll need those high school notes on Television makeup and repair. I’m sure they’re in the basement somewhere.
So you never know. Collecting things is not that bad if you have the space. Just don’t tell my wife.
