You Collect What???

On every other Wednesday, I play cards with my friend Slant’s father-in-law and friends. It is normally low stakes, dealer calls. We play such interesting games as “Follow the Queen,” “Queen of Spades,” “44,” “Baseball,” “Criss-Cross,” and even a little “Hold-em.”

Last Wednesday, I went over to play, and realized that I was the only one showing up. Slant’s father-in-law (that’s where we play) informed me that when a month has 5 Wednesdays, we skip one of those weeks, so I was out of luck. However, I guess he felt bad that I drove all the way over, even though it is only a 10-minute drive. He invited me in for what I was hoping was only for a little while.

However, with Mr. Slant (that’ll be his name from now on, because I’m getting sick of writing Slant’s Father-in-law), one has to understand his stories tend to last for hours. He is an antique collector/seller … boring enough. However, the antiques he focuses on are pottery … even duller.

I spent the next two hours listening to all of these stories about how he collects, sells, and restores pottery. He went into great detail, much to my dismay. In fact, he talked excitedly about such things as the different kinds of sandpaper, types of glue, and the difficulty of matching blue paint with pottery. Even when my own eyes glazed over with boredom, he refused to acknowledge this, and continued to talk about the wonders of pottery.

When he was finished with these stories, he went on to talk about friends who collect and antique jewelry and guns. Then, he asked me what I was interested in collecting. I made the mistake of saying music and board games. Mr. Slant owns a book on toys and board games, and proceeded to show this to me … this, of course prolonged the night by a good ½ hour, and dramatically increased the headache that I had developed.

Mercifully, he let me go, but not before asking if anybody in my family collected or sold antiques. Having not learned my lesson, I informed him that my uncle collects antique radios. His eyes brightened … but thankfully, I was already out the door, and told him that we could continue our interesting dialogue next week during cards … unfortunately, next week is now here. Gulp!