There is The Collecting, and there is The Wait. All dread The Wait.

I’ve posted before on collecting, but there’s another part–the part in between those bursts of frantic aisle-scouring.

The Wait both is and is not a fun time for collectors. It’s that point where one of two things happens–either the collector has caught up on everything that may be easily acquired at retail (this is, of course, not counting those online searches for things already off the shelves), or the collector has run out of money to catch up on things on the shelves.

As you can no doubt see from that simplified explanation, there are both Good and Bad Waits (Tom Waits falls somewhere in between). Even the Good Wait, though, can be agonizing…I mentioned in that earlier writing that we struggle with the internal debate over whether our passion constitutes addiction. This is where that comes from. You see, when we’re not buying toys, we’re planning it. Our store visits may drop off slightly, but we track toy news sites, we keep personal lists–the messiest and sloppiest of us have a neatly organized approach to “the hobby.” Every moment during The Wait is made of anticipation, anxiety; we play it down because in our rational minds we know they’re just fucking toys, but frantic flashes of thoughts sometimes make it through–What if stores around here don’t carry the next wave? What if someone else gets there first? What if the scalpers clear it out? Yes–we brood. Even in the Good Wait, we worry, and we watch, like circling vultures, for the first report of a shipment, so that we know to start checking the aisles on our drives to and from work. To get up early on a Saturday and catch the store when it opens, before the kids and other collectors (otherwise known as “those bastards who take all the good toys”) descend. It is an obsessive behavior, yes. Trust us, we know.

Sometimes, if the Good Wait is long enough, and we’ve got some money set aside, we’ll use the time to catch up on older things on the list, scouring for online deals and receiving package after package (I am a testament to this–sometimes they all arrive the same day, and there is quite the pile of empty shipping boxes. I’m amazed the other half tolerates it). However, unless one collects only one line, this usually happens rarely, if at all–we end up playing almost continual catchup.

Worse than the Good Wait, though, is the Bad Wait (wow, who would’ve followed THAT train of logic?). Granted, Bad Waits are usually shorter, lasting until the next paycheck or so, but there is nothing worse than knowing that what you want is THERE. It’s staring you in the face (and yes, we will go to the store just to stare it down), and you can’t afford it. You know that one of those “other bastards” is going to get it, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And of course, by the time one is paid, those toys are gone. If one is lucky, there will be another shipment soon, but there’s never a guarantee.

Of course, this worrisome time gets to us. It may come across as something else, or we may hide it entirely, but The Wait takes its toll regardless. We get a little moodier, some of us may even begin to question why we collect in the first place. We’ll look at the piles of toys we own and think, what’s the point? Others of us will instead obsess over those same toys, arranging their display in intricate and neurotically executed fashion. Woe to anyone who disturbs the display.

Still more of us won’t even associate our doldrums with The Wait itself. It must be the weather, we’ll think, or perhaps I haven’t been sleeping enough (being an insomniac who lives in Western Washington, these are my two default excuses for everything). But the truth is, scouring the aisles, finding that one thing we’ve been waiting and looking for over the course of months, is an experience of joy for us. We savor, if not the hunt, then the acquisition–holding that toy in our hands is a reward for patience, diligence, and attention to detail. It’s a reward, and a peculiar kind of happiness, that we’re denied during The Wait. This isn’t to say we aren’t still happy with other aspects of our life, but the thrill found in collecting becomes conspicuously absent for periods of time. It’s almost as though we’re missing a part of ourselves.

All dread The Wait.

Tags: collecting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Blarg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.