When I was in grade school I used to crap my pants a lot. The whole thing about organizing my day around my bowel movements had me feeling like I was under extreme pressure. Oftentimes it would be too much pressure and I would crack. I hated to poop! I wanted to be in complete control of my digestive system and it frustrated me that I wasn't. I felt the concept of random pooping at various times throughout the day seemed like too much responsibility for humans to bear. So as a kid I felt I was waging a war against the poop.
Once when I was playing softball in first grade I went up to bat and after about the second strike I felt a little marble shaped object roll down the right leg of my pants. That's when I felt my poop anxiety had gone too far. I was clearly losing the battle against poopy. But right then and there I accepted the poo into my life as my savior. It was a part of me and I decided not to fight it anymore. Then I struck out. That was the last time I ever pooped myself accidentally. There have been other times when I lost control of the brown monsters, the last being as recently as '93 but I was in a hiking situation and fully accepted the consequences.
So when Rob from The Paunch Stevenson Show told me that Freud explained collecting as a consequence of being stuck in the anal phase of childhood development, I was totally all about that. Based on Rob's heads up, I went looking for more on the subject and I found this San Francisco Chronicle article about the psychology of collecting. It was a most excellent read. But I wonder now that I have begun selling some of my toy robots on ebay in an attempt to redefine myself as a more hardcore G1 collector, am I becoming more or less anal? I will be pondering this the next time I'm on the toilet, which is where I get all my blog ideas.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
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5 comments:
Thanks for posting the SFGate article.
Yes! I'm glad someone is using that article to incite discussion. I should have focused more on the article than my anal fixations. Leave it to me to overlook genuine dialog inspiring material in favor of writing about poo.
Evil King, there's a web site where people share poop stories, poop information, poop psychology, bathroom technology, etc. called poopreport.com. Perhaps you've heard of it?
I interviewed Dave Praeger, the guy who runs the web site, in episode 71 of the Paunch Stevenson Show.
I'm going to read the SFGate.com article now.
P.S. In the past, I've been obsessed with some of my collections too, including video games, music, comic books, toys, and trading cards. Over the last four years, I've gotten much better about that...and about going to the bathroom.
SO traumatized am I by my own poop experiences that I have no interest in reading about other people's struggles with the brown trouser snakes. I don't want to discuss it so I expunge the thoughts by writing them out here. Me going to poop report would be like a rape victim wanting to read rape stories of constant raping. In fact, when Infected and the Paunch Stevenson Show both interviewd that poo guy, I never downloaded those episodes (although I super love them on any other day).
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