weekend report

I developed a fever sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning. There were many symptoms, but unfortunately one of them -- rampant stupidity -- prevented me from figuring out what was wrong for several hours. I'm not sure if it was all due to the toothiness or the reapparance of the nasty bug I came down with two weeks ago. (I did manage to call my dentist and report in.) Fortunately, things broke by about mid-day Saturday. Much ibuprofen, many naps, and extremely happy cats later, I'm feeling nearly normal again.

One of the tonics this weekend was an article I read in the AARP magazine. Actually, I think it's called AARP, the Magazine now. It used to be called Modern Maturity, but maybe they figured out that just because you've turned 50, you aren't necessarily mature, and certainly not in any modern kind of way. They probably leave that to today's 10 year olds and hope that you've regressed to old-fashioned immaturity by the type you reach AARP age.

Anyways, this article was about collecting and frankly some of what was described could probably be cured by good drugs. I live with someone who borders on packratism himself, so this stuff frightens me. That, and I'm always reminded of what someone said when she discovered that a mutual friend collected figurines -- "Eeeuw. More dusting."

Anyways, buried amongst tales of people who collect dolls and antique radios -- the prosaic stuff -- was the story of a guy who runs a mustard museum. This guy's collecting habit started when he became fascinated with the first cow to be flown and milked in an airplane. He became obsessed and created a shrine to the cow, Elm Farm Ollie, in his living room, even writing an opera, Madame Butterfat. The article sadly notes that there just wasn't that much related to EFO to collect. (Can't you just imagine that the shrine consisted of about five items?)

The mustard museum was apparently "born out of a personal tragedy" -- the 1986 World Series loss of the Red Sox to the New York Mets. The collector, "stunned and depressed," stumbled around a grocery store in Madison Wisconsin at 2:30 in the morning until he came upon the condiment aisle and had an epiphany: "I thought that if I would collect mustard, that would somehow lead to the Red Sox winning the World Series. I had no idea what I was doing -- I was so depressed. Life was tenuous. I just knew I needed to collect some mustard."

The rest is history, both for the Red Sox and for the world, which is graced with a 5000-item mustard museum, courtesy of one man's facing up to his own destiny.

I can once again attest to the healing power of laughter. And I think the AARP membership has just paid for itself.