Have a cup?

It started out innocently enough. I was traveling on business, for training, while I was with Pacific Telephone (as it was called then). I was spending a lot of time in airports; connecting flights, destinations, and all that. You wander into the gift shops, you buy paperbacks to read on the plane, you browse through the various gifts and trinkets with nothing on your mind except killing some time until you have to board.

It was just a cup, with something about the city I was in on it. Dallas, I think. It caught my eye and, on impulse, I picked it up and took it to the counter. It's so easy... that first one. Harmless. I would just bring it home, maybe take it to work, a coffee cup. I had a few others, with logos or whatever on them. Souvenirs of various events.

But you can't stop. You buy more. And more. Some have sayings, some are novelties. Funny, or pithy, or both.

So now I have somewhere between 50 and 75 cups. I do not display them, only about a third of them are in the kitchen cabinet. Faye complains about those cluttering the cabinet and the close to 50 that are stored in the garage cabinet. "They take up space", "we never use them", "why do you keep them?" I don't know why I keep them, I just do. I suspect a genetic connection.

My mother collected things. The first (and most) I remember were her rabbits. Big, small, tiny, all sizes. Crude, ornate, glass, ceramic, even plastic and rubber. She also didn't display them overtly, they were just there on shelves, in cabinets, here and there. My father said she had "pack rat-itis". Of course, he ignored the tools he collected over the years, never throwing (or even giving) them away. Once he owned something, it was always his. He did give me a small chain saw once. He no longer had a need for it, or had bought another one, and he knew I had a use for a chain saw from time to time. On a visit to my house about a year later, he asked me about it. I told him I had made good use of it and that I had loaned it to a friend who had a need.

He seemed angry that I would loan it out. It was as if I had given away his property. Very strange.