I’ve waited all my life to have some kind of link to The Guinness Book. Finally, in an indirect way that’s slightly more than just picking up the book to thumb through it for the details of the Tallest Man in the World, I have a connection.
We’re talking a blood connection.
My cousin, Jude Cernica–I’m naming her because she’s already been outed in the city where she lives– http://www.vindy.com/content/local_regional/307075150822726.php
This is slightly cooler than when my old neighbour Ellie Coilfi was in the Kids Did It section of National Geographic’s World magazine back in the late 70’s. Jude is a certified as holding the world’s largest collection of paper napkins. We’re not talking a package or white napkins from the supermarket or napkins nicked from McDonalds. She has fancy napkins, printed cocktail napkins from restaurants, napkins with Richard Nixon’s signature—seventeen thousand of them. Maybe more.
The women in on my mother’s side do this sort of thing. They collect stuff. My mother’s house is a museum of Waterford crystal, German incense burners, Danish plates, and more crap than you could spend a year washing and dusting—as I swear I did in my childhood. One Aunt collects designer handbags. Another had a thing for these hideous, hand-made dolls (Sorry Aunt X!) featuring holiday motifs.
Luckily, this collecting gene has skipped me.
Or so I thought.
I don’t collect anything besides books, and books are not categorised as knickknacks. Plus I only keep a select number. I think less is more. Yet I’m living in a museum again. This time, the bits of crap in my house is all on account of The Shrinky Dink.
Yes, that’s right. I married a man who collects. He’s a hoarder of crud, of espresso makers, of piles of papers and little trinkets from holidays. Guess who gets to clean it all?
And another year of my life is sacrificed to battling dust.
The result of all this? Shrinky Dink found Jude’s story fascinating. He’s decided to help my cousin with her record-making collection by getting her a paper napkin signed by the Prime Minister of Australia.
I suggested he just send her the napkin he kept from his last visit to the Coffee Club.
Was that so wrong?
Anyhow, kudos to you Jude, and thanks for making me feel indirectly special!