collectors items

My sisters and I were collectors of freakish things. In her very young toddler youth, Sarah would collect these stuffed rabbit heads with blankets attached. She had 36 of them. She would pick the fuzz off of them until they were threadbare. My mom vacuumed a lot. I, on the other hand, collected clowns. Well, my collection was limited to three, in a range of sizes. The largest was named Obo, the middle was Cousin (he looked a little different from the others), and the third was Junior (for size related reasons). 

A collection can only have value if its owner believes it does. To my sister, those Playschool rabbit blanket-toy fusions were money. My clowns were top shelf. Losing pieces of these collections meant losing your mind, sanity, and torturing our mother for hours. It was her job to find the things we would lose. 

With age, grew the sophistication of our collections. We used to frequently visit Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI which, in a sentence, is time warp into pre-industrial America-- hello Firestone Farm and Glass blowing shops. In this magical land, it was easy to get sucked into the looniness of muslin dresses and horse drawn carraiges. Here, my requirements of life were simpler, my expectations weaker. Though my sister and I loved nothing more than vomit worthy roller coasters and carnival rides, suddenly, a ride on a turn of the century Carousel with wood carved horses (along with 1 cat, and 2 dogs) was the cat's pajamas. We were tugging at our mother's petticoat, "Mummy, dear, we would fancy a ride on the carousel, oh please do say yes!"

At the end of a good afternoon's mosey 'bout a few displaced farm houses, school houses and that wondrous carousel, we hit the souvenir shop. Again we tugged at our mother's purse strings, "Mummy, can i have a penny for a peppermint stick or a pack of lemon drops?" The candy we would have turned our nose up at or disparaged as old people candy from our halloween baskets was suddenly a prize. Inside the souvenir shop, we were grappling with our last chance to embrace a yesteryear we never ever knew and would soon discard once we stopped at Bennigan's for dinner out on the way home. At home we wouldn't spend hours boiling water over a cracklin' fire or charcoal homework inside primers. We wouldn't save our pennies and knickles for cinnamon sticks and roasted peanuts. No, we would gorge ourselves on the latest gel filled gummy candy and dabble with Rollercoaster Tycoon on the IBM. 

The prized posssession of the gift shop, the coveted prize, though, was not a mere penny sweet stick. We had higher expectations than that. 

Along the back wall of the gift shop were baskets of rabbits feet, all different assorted colors, individually dyed and shaped. My sisters and I poked through the baskets, speculating about which ones to purchased, based upon a variety of qualities. Did it have a protruding nail or some defect in its bone structure? Were we interested in a full sized or a mini foot ( the mini ones were from baby rabbits, I suppose, and were cheaper but probably should've been more, considering that they were kind of like a delicacy)? We held them up to the light and squinted like diamond prospectors in the mines of South Africa. The feet smelled like a nature center, or like the prairies that Laura Ingalls Wilder frolicked through daily. These were the toys that children had to play with in days of old we assumed (completely untrue), and we needed to fit the role. 

According to some sources, rabbits feet were old good luck gems. We just liked to collect them. My favorites were a miniature magenta one and a white one- au natural and free of dyes. I stored them in the top drawer next to my socks and potpourri satchel my grandma brought back from Ireland. 

One day, bored of my rabbits feet lining my drawer, I took them out and put them to use. Inside my closet, I hung them from the metal shelving units, added to control the excess of Lee jeans flooding out into my room frequently. With a little handy work, giftwrap ribbon and tape, I created a montage of rabbits feet hanging from the shelving units. 

Then I lured the family cat into my room and placed her in my closet. Voila- a workout center for the cat. For about a week, the cat lived in my closet. I heard the thunk thunk of her batting the rabbits feet back and forth while I did my homework. 

After the cat tired of the project, I did not dissemble it. I left them hanging, though one by one they managed to disappear, either slipping away into the abyss of my shoes or into the cat's mangled toy collection. They left naturally though, slipping away in the night, in the company of a new collector or just because they weren't so timeless after all.