That boy ain't right

Everybody has hobbies and weird... predilections. Some collect all things Superman. Some run around in Civil War garb. Some run around as Elvis. All eccentric, to be sure, but definitely within the realm of sanity.

With Mer and myself, however, the prospect gets weird.

For example, Mer is a nut for autumn. It's only understandable since she's from New England and a Masshole to boot. Absolutely nuts for fall. It gets a little weird, however, once we go to pumpkin festivals or when Halloween rolls around.

She fondles the pumpkins. It starts even before we hit the patch. I'm not exaggerating: her eyes get really big once we come within 5 blocks in the car. Her breathing gets quicker. She'll jump out of the car, walk deliberately to the patch, and spend some time picking out the perfect pumpkin. You might think she'd go to the largest one in the patch, but her pumpkin senses tingle for the smaller-sized, round ones free from warts and blemishes.

My tastes run to the grotesque. I'll pick out something huge and lopsided, with many warts and deformities -- nothing rotting, but definitely something odd. (When I was growing up, my dad introduced me to Makita saws and how many cool things could be done with power tools, gourds, and stencils.) I'll have mine picked out, I'll walk over to where she is, and she's repeatedly hugging one of them, saying:

"Look at it, Brian. Isn't it so wonderfully ORANGE? Isn't it ROUND? FEEL it... mmmmmmmmm...."

At this point I'm just wondering how many people drank the Kool-Aid.

Thing is, my wife's the sane one.

Acting may have grown into a passion with me -- and one that I hope will turn into a bona-fide career with the gargantuan amount of work I'm putting into it -- but I still have an odd hobby. Yes, playing card collecting. I don't know how I got started with it or when it started, but I have this weird virus in my system.

This is an excerpt of a recent email to my wife -- when I discovered this site today:

> There are so many.  So beautiful... remember how you get when you're in a
> pumpkin patch?  I'm like that now.  I just wish I could touch them.  Wish I 
> could look at all the kings, and aces.

Ok, this is definitely creepier than my pumpkin fetish!!!

;-)

She's right, though. Is it sane to look at cards from Hawaii, India, Italy, Mongolia, Norway, and Trinidad with abject lust? Harbor a greedy acquisitive desire to own a reproduction set of a UK deck from 1676? Gaze way too longingly at some obscure US set -- from a 1962 Time magazine?

Yes, I need help. But I need the cards first. And I'm even easier to buy for now.