Collections

[Martin Hash]

I’ve written dozens of books nobody reads, made hundreds of videos nobody watches, recorded thousands of podcasts nobody listens to, a perennial political candidate nobody votes for, and the dictionary uses my picture to explain fetishes, one of the biggest of which is collecting. I’m an inveterate collector; I collect just about anything. In fact, I have a collection of collections, and since I’m also somewhat obsessive, I like round numbers, so I wanted 100 collections and worked compulsively towards it. I got to 99 and couldn’t think of anything more. My wife, Gwynne, understands and was trying to help me come up with the last collection so I would quit bothering her about it. You see I had a new book, "List of LIsts," which had pictures of all my collections, and was waiting for the last one.

Book Cover.jpg

“What about paper clips?” She suggested.
“They have to be different,” I replied, exasperated.
“What about your fish?”
“No pets.”
“What about…?” She mentioned several other things.
“Already got those.” I couldn’t believe she didn’t know; some of those things were hanging on the wall upstairs, or on the shelves in the living room, or in the drawers in the kitchen.
Gwynne thought for a while: “What about your grandma’s button collection; what happened to that?”
My grandma used to collect buttons; as a young child, I loved going through the box they were in and sorting them by size, shape & color. It’s one of my first memories and probably where my collecting addiction started.
“I don’t know what happened to it,” I said wistfully. “But they would be perfect.”
“I have a few buttons you can have,” Gwynne offered.
“Okay,” I said, pleased with such a perfect 100th collection solution. “I’ll pretend they’re my grandma’s buttons.”
Problem is, now that I’ve reached the goal, I’ve got to go to 200.

Buttons c.jpg