Theo the Collector

When Theo was just a tiny toddler, he used to carry armfuls of stuff around the house. He eventually got a little tin pail that we nicknamed the "treasure bucket" that he could load up and carry all his things around in. Five years later, not much has changed. When we go visiting, he fills up a backpack with items deemed essential for travel.

At breakfast the other morning, he told me there was string in his shorts. Assuming he meant a small, unravelled thread, I told him to come see me and I would snip it with scissors. He kept mumbling about the string and pulling at his shorts until he finally said "See?!" and held up a baseball-sized wad of string that he had pulled out of his shorts.

Things Theo has collected or attempted to collect (and these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head):

rubber bands*
used stickers
sequins
dice
rocks
candy wrappers*
apple seeds*
fuzzy things that fly in the air*
marbles
hockey pucks
bouncy balls
rubber animals
paint samples
plastic rings
coins (sorted by color)
plastic toothpicks*
twist ties*

* thwarted by mom before it could turn into a full-fledged collection.



But ... the most famous of all is the toilet-paper tube collection. The entire bottom drawer of his nightstand is filled with toilet-paper tubes. He rarely does anything with them, just enjoys collecting them. Last week, while discussing the latest obsession (Bakugan) and, he came up with the idea of making a house for them out of his toilet-paper tubes. There was also a lengthy discussion (there is no other kind when Theo is involved) about adding some kind of pneumatic system in which the Bakugan could be shot from their tubes when it was time to brawl (hence the air pump in the picture), but it did not work out quite as planned. He says that he wants to be an inventor or a builder when he grows up.