Diary of a Professional Overthinker – Entry 7

 

I’ve sometimes wondered at what point a collection turns into a hoard. Is it when the item being collected is obscure? Or when the quantity demands readjustments to living space? Maybe it’s both… My grandfather once opened one of his kitchen cupboards to get me a bag and we were knocked backward by a torrent of soft plastics.

Strangely, collectors rarely seem to notice when they’ve crossed into hoarder territory. Even when everyone around them notices, and even when someone articulates it with voiced concern. 

My mother Despo’s quirks go unnoticed by us most of the time, that is until a normal person enters the family dynamic. My sister-in-law Hayley was first introduced to the family quirks when she and my brother came across discounted meat at the local grocery store one day. My brother Liam pointed, ‘Hayley, send mum a photo of that mince which has been marked down by two dollars.’ 

Hayley scoffed. ‘Really? Surely she isn’t that desperate to save money, not when she drives a luxury car and lives in a house with water views!’ 

What Hayley didn’t realise is that my mother could be the recipient of a million dollar lotto win and still sniff out expired meats like a vulture sniffs out carrion. 

There have been more than one occasion where I’ve gone to bed after a dodgy dinner clutching an evil eye medallion in the hope it keeps the salmonella at bay. The problem is that my mother pushes around her Micro-biologist title with such authority. She demonstrates her scientific expertise by holding iffy meats an inch from her nose. The conclusion: ‘It hardly smells. Besides, it’s going to get cooked, so…’ 

The photo from Hayley was received by Despo who saw only gold in place of the meat’s greyish tinge. She called Hayley back and spoke in a rush. ‘Yes I want the mince.’ 

‘Really? How many do you want, there’s quite a f—’

‘Take the lot!’ 

‘But…’ Hayley stuttered. 

Despo spat into the phone, ‘Hurry! Grab them before someone else does!’ 

Hayley and Liam sprang into action. They loaded the trolley, stacking the mince into five precarious towers, unaware of how they were about to look at checkout when a staff member needed to be called to assist.  

Hayley is now part of the family. She knows how to prevent looking like a deranged discounted meat pilferer. She also knows that if another ice age wiped out the majority of humankind, that future historians could discern what cuts of meat the species ate over a ten year period by performing ice core tube testing in mum’s chest freezer.  

My eldest brother Jason became an accidental hoarder when we were kids. It was Easter and we had each been given a large chocolate Bunny. In Greek tradition, the eggs handed out at Easter time are boiled ones. And crazily, dyeing them red or blue never made them taste any better. So you can imagine our reactions when that fine Easter morning, we were handed chocolate in place of sulphuric eggs. The middle brother Jonathan and I devoured ours in less than a minute. Jason didn’t. He stared into the forlorn eyes of his bunny like he was expecting it to blink and ask, ‘Pretty please, can I have a chalky green yolk.’

Jonathan and I tried to talk sense into him by adopting our gentlest persuasion tactics. ‘It’s not alive dummy!’ 

He didn’t listen, instead he clutched it tighter. 

Jonathan and I had no other choice. We needed to take matters into our own hands — we evolved into Neanderthal, and set upon him with teeth barred.

Jason ran and shut himself in his room. He wouldn’t open the door. 

We gave up… until the opportune moment — Jason’s next toilet break.

As soon he closed the bathroom door behind him, Jonathan and I launched our attack. We ransacked his room. Searched every crevice. Eventually we found it. Hidden at the top of his cupboard, wrapped in a bundle of tunnel-ball ribbons. But time had run out. Jason returned at the exact moment we tore a strip from the bunny’s foil wrapper. He dove, only just saving it from the jaws of his lawless beastly siblings. 

After that, security tightened. The bunny was stored in a thief-proof box of steel — Jason’s safe. And there it remained, for six years the half-dressed bunny was hoarded… and became known as Dusty. 

My aunt was married to a man named Wolfgang who had a collection of pens. Not just any pens, they were pens from banks which had been taken without being given. I never found out why Wolfgang’s collection had these parameters, all I know is that most of his adult life was dedicated to working for a bank in Germany. Maybe the pen taking was his version of revenge. Perhaps they were his way of claiming unpaid overtime by retaining a lifetime’s worth of ink. Did he shove the stolen pens up at financial institutes as if they were a thrusting middle finger? 

The pens he collected were not for use, they were not for display. They were denied the light of day and kept stashed away inside a padlocked bag. 

My uncle Nick once tried to impress Wolfgang with a pen he’d taken from his own bank. ‘Check it out Wolfgang, my bank has a promotion called No Strings Attached.’ He flashed the pen with the bank logo. 

What uncle Nick didn’t realise is that the bank’s offering of the pen by not attaching it to any anchor points removed its worth completely. He might as well have been trying to impress Wolfgang with a My Little Pony HB pencil. 

Wolfgang gave uncle Nick a bored look. ‘Nick, I already have five of those pens… I took them before their stupid promotion. And I don’t even bank there!’ 

My ex-mother-in-law was a real wildcard when it came to the type of things she hoarded. I helped her downsize from a four bedroom home to a two bed villa and she somehow managed to do it by downsizing the building, while keeping everything inside it. When squeezing all of her belongings into the new dwelling, I found many strange things. There were boxes full of magazine recipe cut-outs (collected by a person who doesn’t cook). I found tubs of sheet music (collected by a person who never played a musical instrument). When I came across a pair of mens work boots I began to suspect she was living a double life.

Apparently not, she has just taken the description of keep-safes to be quite literal. I learned the hard way when I tried to toss a rusty Tooheys can, that one man’s trash is still trash, it’s just sentimental trash.

Perhaps I’m no different to any hoarder. While they’re collecting pens as middle finger extensions, mouldy chocolate and expired meat, I’m collecting characters. Their peculiarities, habits and odd little expressions are all tucked away in my internal character cupboard, ready to be rummaged through whenever I need a smile. 

It’s not my fault the cupboard is brimming (I happen to know a lot of characters).