The Collector

Throughout my young life, I collected things. Big things. Little Things. Soft things. Hard things. Normal things. Weird things (as if that is any surprise here).

Actually, I am a little surprised by the sheer number of objects that I once collected. Today, I will list as many as I remember, why I became obsessed with them, and why I stopped. See if any of my collections spark childhood memories of your own days when having just one was not enough to satisfy your mind.
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Tadpole collecting: Because our house was built on the side of a large hill, we would get rain runoff that pooled between the upper field and the raised gravel of the driveway. Froggy mommies and daddies did their thing in this water, and baby tadpoles would swim happily. Unfortunately, this place dried out often, leaving only small puddles where the tadpoles congregated, helpless.

I carried two mason jars (one empty and one filled with water) to this spot. I used the empty one to scoop up the little ones and then dumped them into the water-filled jar. Once I had all the survivors, I transported them to a water hole where a natural spring welled up from the ground even during the driest of seasons.

During the evening hours, I leaned on the windowsill, listening to the gentle croaking and knowing I had a hand at the froggy symphony. I stopped collecting tadpoles when my father installed a drainage pipe to syphon off the water runoff, as the little tadpoles would take a trip down the hill to the ditch that lead into the creek.
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Pinecone collecting: This is the reason I collected them. The reason I stopped was that too many of them kept getting stuck inside the pipe.
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Coin collecting: This was not a big habit for me. The only ones I collected were 50cent pieces, Canadian coins, a coin from the Bahamas, and those pennies that said “One Cent” on the back. *shrugs*
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Rock collecting: I do not believe there is any normal reason kids will hoard rocks. Yet I had the urge to do it. There was no particular type of rock I collected. Whatever one caught my eye I placed into my empty Pringles container. The ones I liked most would go on top. Yet my most precious one laid at the bottom: a piece of coal.

Why did I have a piece of coal in my collection? Because I had watched the old Superman movie where he crushed the coal in his hand and turned it into a gleaming diamond. Although I was not as strong as he was, I hoped the pressure from all the other stones would do the trick. I stopped collecting them when I found out just how long it would take for the coal to change into a diamond.
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Butterfly collecting: I stayed with this one for a whole week because that was how long it took me to catch a butterfly. On that same day, I stopped collecting them when I found out I would have to push a pin into their bodies. I learned it was much better to watch a living butterfly flit from flower to flower than kill them and stare at their tiny corpses behind cold glass.
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Feather collecting: I got my first feather during elementary school when our class went on a three-week camping trip. We were making corncob pipes and turkey callers when I found a turkey feather during a hike. From that day on, I searched our yard for feathers, any feathers, even if I had to run around the barnyard scaring the chickens trying to get them to shed a few. I never really stopped collecting outright. The urge dwindled away, and the chickens fought back.
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Handmade Rorschach collecting: Yes, I collected those little personality inkblot tests where a person stares at the blotch and says it looks like two people dancing, though we all know that every one of those splotches looks like a squashed bug on a windshield. Well, I made those splotches as a kid.

With papers in hand, I would go outside to my favorite large flat rock. Then I walked around the yard, searching for a particular weed. This weed would create inedible purple berries. I grabbed the bottom of my shirt, hoarded the berries in the makeshift basket, and returned to my rock.

I deposited a berry onto the paper, folded it over, and smashed it with another rock. Viola! A Rorschach. By the time I used up all the paper, my purple fingers were tired from smashing rocks together and I had run out of berries. I headed inside the house, did the customary hand washing that did nothing to get rid of the stain, and threw my tie-dyed clothes into the hamper. I stopped the collecting when my mother threatened to take away my allowance because of all the clothes I ruined.
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Glass Figurine collecting: I collected fantasy figurines: dragons, unicorns, and pegasus (or is it pegasi?) My mother started this one for me since glass could not stain clothes like berries. Unfortunately, glass is fragile and the shelf unit that I had them on tipped over. I still have a few today. Yet the urge is not there for me to start this habit again.
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Well, that is the end of my list. Tell me what you collected when you were a child.