A recent front-page story about a resident with a hoarding disorder made its way to our Journalism Practices classroom at Highlands.
The discussion concerned a woman who collects stuff — so much stuff that the city went after her. The more salient issue was not the article itself but the term “hoarding disorder,” which few of us had heard of. Does any psychological association recognize it?
I came home that evening and asked my wife, “What to you is a hoarding disorder?”
“It’s what you’ve got,” she said.
“Please explain what you mean, My Delight.”
Well, she mentioned the number of pedometers I own. Now for the uninitiated, a pedometer is an electronic device that clips to one’s belt, which measures the number of steps one takes. If I surpass 10,000 steps a day, I feel all right.
Bonnie wasn’t willing to stop there. “How about your millions of DVDs? You buy them, watch them once and beg other people to exchange with you, like you used to trade comic books every Saturday morning with those kids who came by in your childhood ‘hood.”
She was right. I have many DVDs, but I can’t trade with just anyone. I collect classics, like “The Hours,” “Frieda,” “Gone With the Wind” and “Dr. Zhivago.” The people I’d swap with would have the entire “Arizona Chainsaw Massacre” collection, a bunch of banal TV series on a par with “Friends,” or else ‘50s movies such as “Girls on the Beach,” and its prequels, sequels and requels, “Girls in Trouble,” “Girls in Trouble on the Beach” and “Girls in Trouble at Muscle Beach.”
Bonnie insists I’m intolerant of other people’s tastes. I am certainly not, although I do subscribe to the theory of my former Highlands English professor, Thomas Oliver Mallory, who made a point that “‘Trees,’ by Joyce Kilmer is the favorite poem of people who don’t like poetry.”
Hmmm. I can expand on that list:
• Ravel’s “Bolero” is the favorite selection of people who don’t like classical music.
• Hemingway is the favorite author of people who don’t care for American Literature.
• The Dallas Cowboys are the favorite team of those who don’t appreciate or understand professional football.
• Fried chicken is the favorite Sunday dinner of people who haven’t polished their taste buds.
• Monopoly is favored among those who don’t care for board games.
But back to hoarding. I tried to get back at my wife by suggesting she collects too many books. True, she walks out of Salvation Army armed with enough armfuls of books to fill our armoire, but virtually the same books go back the following Saturday, in exchange for 20 more. She’ll buy several paperbacks for a dollar and doubtless has purchased some of the books a number of times.
Having failed to nail her on book hoarding, I mentioned the number of magazine subscriptions she has: Atlantic Monthly, Good Housekeeping, Psychology Today, Newsweek, and National Geographic.
But then she countered with my subscriptions: Sports Illustrated, Reader’s Digest, ESPN, MacHome, MacWorld, American Photographer, Civil War Times, etc.
That was a tie.
All this leads to the question: Do people have too much stuff? When we decided a buy a double-wide and place it next door, because we’d outgrown our old house, we needed to rent storage facilities for a few months. Many of the items made it to donation bins around town, and even though the newer house is twice the size of the old one, we still had many large items left over, and in no time, our new house was packed.
And if we could give away pickup-loads of stuff and not even remember what the items were, isn’t that proof we’ve acquired too much?
I routinely go over things I bought before the computer bug bit. I’d browse the university book store and buy plastic ruler-like templates for making precise squares and circles. Even a basic computer program can produce far more accurate shapes, but I still hold on to the trinkets, some of which haven’t been used in a decade.
The hoarding habit is at once mitigated and aggravated by my ability to lose things.
Losing things I’ve recently bought helps to unclutter the house. But at the same time, it creates the need to get new ones, and in some cases, extras. That’s why I own a dozen pedometers. Remember, pedometers’ batteries die, their clips break, and some undercount my steps. And that’s why I buy so many.
How is it possible for a grown man to insert two different colored pens in his pocket and arrive at work 10 minutes later with no trace of them? How does it happen that I may buy a 12-pack of permanent markers and with only one use each, lose all the caps? And why does every lost marker appear in the lint filter of our dryer, after having two-toned my best shirt?
The frequency of lost marker caps was greater before I discovered manufacturers suddenly created a slot on the marker to store the cap.
The comedian George Carlin once did a routine in which he imagined reclaiming everything he ever lost on earth, at the pearly gates.
Imagine Saint Peter toting several bags and saying, “Well, Art, since you’ve made it this far, we’re returning your 2,013 caps to ballpoint pens. And those 1,632 pedometers you lost around the house, getting out of your car, or on the treadmill: they’re all here, some with lots of mileage left on them.”
If I make it up there, I’d also like to reclaim my 36 dozen pairs of sunglasses and 492 house and car keys.
But if I do get to reclaim these items, will that not create a new, celestial type hoarding disorder?
And will Heaven tolerate the vast amounts of stuff, or will those in charge become like our own city council, faced with residents who litter our neighborhoods with bus, truck and car(casses), and even collapsed historic buildings?