[AT] Melting it all down.(copper is the new gold), now: Age-related hoarding

[Larry Goss]

You just reminded me of a "problem" I'm having to deal with, with my older brother.  He's currently recovering from heart surgury and he sent me out to the home place to do some stuff when I visited with him last week.  In the basement, I found a cache of empty Quaker Oats cereal boxes.  101 of them!  I asked him what sort of project he had planned for them, and he said, "Nothing."  He's just keeping them to see if the years and years of eating Quaker Oats had any effect on his heart.  I asked him why he didn't keep a tally on a sheet of paper.  He said it was easier to count the boxes!

I got to thinking that in some ways all of us are doing similar things with the collections of tractor-related stuff that we all have.  There actually is a name for it -- Age-Related Hoarding.  If you Google that, then once you get by all the articles about birds, squirrels, and dogs, you will come to the stuff about people.  It's a particular version of Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder, and apparently a lot of us suffer from it.

When I asked my brother why he was collecting all the weird non-collectible items he has around the house, he tried to turn the tables on me by asking when I was going to get rid of MY collections.  I told him I've already started.  I sold all my metal toy cars and trucks last Christmas, and I sold four tractors a couple months ago.

When things get out of hand, it makes the headlines.  We've all seen the stories about elderly women with hundreds of cats or dogs living in very poor conditions.  There were incidents of a large number of horses being kept by a man who wasn't feeding them and people accumulating newspapers in stacks so high and numerous that you can't get through the house, etc.  My point is: we all have to watch ourselves on uncontrolled collections.

It's been three days since I bought my most recent tractor.  :-)

Larry


----- Original Message -----
From: Recentjester at aol.com
Date: Saturday, July 19, 2008 7:51
Subject: Re: [AT] Melting it all down.(copper is the new gold)
To: at at lists.antique-tractor.com

> if u have so much stuff u can't watch it yes some low 
> lifes  are gonna steal 
> it.... that simple
> 
> 
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