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I do not count the dust bunnies hopping around under my bed as one of my official collections.
Also gathering dust is what used to be my across her dashboard.
"It's what we Jeep people do. We collect rubber ducks."
Traffic came to a halt. She grabbed a duck from a bag of them behind her seat, ran to another Jeep three vehicles ahead of us, and passed a rubber duck through the window to that driver to add to his army of rubber ducks in formation on his dash.
"It's what we Jeep drivers do," she told me when she got back behind the wheel.
"We greet each other with rubber ducks."
"You keep a bag full of rubber ducks in your Jeep?"
"Well, I can't very well gift them to other Jeeps if they're at home."
Collections -- what compels us to surround our surroundings with all makes, models and manners of objects ranging from cast iron irons to Hummel figurines to rusted-out cars in the backyard?
According to Google, which owns a broad collection of both facts and fiction, reasons for why we collect range from a psychological need for order, control, identity or emotional connection.
Personally, I collect figurines of elephants because I'd never get a real elephant to climb the stairs to my apartment. Also, my ceiling doesn't have a 13-foot clearance.
Plus, I could never fit a real elephant onto my shelf of collectibles.
One of my collections is bills. I've got a bunch of them.
Like the beach rocks in the aquarium with my collection of goldfish, I didn't set out to collect bills. It just sort of happened.
Now if I don't keep up with bills collection, collections agencies will call to collect on my collection.
My brother Tim and cousin Dave used to collect beer cans.
Neither of our families touched alcohol, and Tim and Dave were underage, so they were stuck getting their collection from ditches.
I suspect the anti-litter people started the beer can collection craze of the 1970s as a way to clean up roadsides.
My snake collection ended with the first snake, a little green garter snake named Fred, who escaped and may still be living in the walls somewhere.
The live toads collection was interesting while it lasted. I wanted to keep them in my sister's sock drawer, but that didn't work out so well. Her screaming made the toads awfully nervous. And jumpy.
I also think it might be why Fred slithered away, never to be found again.
You don't have to be weird to be a collector, but it helps.
Quirky, I think, is the preferred term.
I visited a couple who collected salt and pepper shakers.
Their basement was jammed with all shapes, sorts and sizes of shakers, some of which I had to crop out of the photos I took because it was a family newspaper.
My advice: Go with the dust bunny collection. It's economical and takes hardly any effort at all. Just sit back, watch TV and the collection will come to you. You've got to collect something.
Cole collects fan mail, because it's rare. Add to his collection at burton.w.cole@gmail.com.