Rant #2,017: Space Race

Space ... the final frontier.

Yes, we have all heard that utterance on 'Star Trek," and yes, I have found that to be true.

Space, as in, available space in my dwelling to put all of my records.

I have accumulated probably about 10,000 records over the years, and we are talking about a hobby that pretty much started in 1965 or 1966, when I was eight and nine years old.

My mother used to buy all of the family's records back then, and that included everything from show tunes to the Monkees.

It was kind of my low-key hobby at the time, behind collecting comic books and baseball cards.

Most of those collections are gone, unfortunately, but the records remained.

I really got into collection records while I was in college, and when my sister got married, I inherited her records.

As an adult, this has been my main hobby, and it has expanded and grown even with the coming of first cassettes, and then CDs, followed by streaming and burning my own disks.

But whatever the case, I have about 10,000 records, crammed into a small space in my daughter's former bedroom.

I have them as neat as I can, on shelves that my wife and I put in some years ago, but the collection has pretty much expanded beyond the shelves, and the records are now on the shelves, and also in my daughter's old dresser, in some plastic storage devices, and on the floor of the room.

The room--which also has a convertible couch/bed in it--has become overrun with records, much like on old piece of bread that has been discarded often gets overrun with ants.

Yesterday, in order to try to free up the old dresser for some of my clothes, my wife and I bought another plastic storage device for some of the singles, and this device sits proudly on one side of the room with the two others I purchased years ago for the same purpose.

The problem is that as my collection continues to expand, the room is getting smaller, and I am running out of space to put the records.

And as I run out of space, they are becoming less and less accessible to me.

The shelves are inadequate to begin with, because they are made for books and doodads, not records, so the records often fall off the shelves, and I have had to take many LPs off the shelves for fear that the particular shelf is too tight and is ready to expunge more records all over the place.

There is one obvious solution to all of this, and that is to stop buying records, something, as a record collector, I am not resigned to doing.

So, what is the other solution?

I have thought about getting something professional done to house these records, but then you have the money factor, and that pretty much discounts that (perhaps if I put away the money I use to buy the records and save that money for shelving ... nah, that isn't going to work.)

So right now, as I type this Rant, I have records to the right of me, records to the left of me, and here I am, stuck in the middle with them.

They will always be welcome in my house, of course, and they stand as a reflection of who I was, as well as who I am.

I guess I will take the suggestion to let it be right now, but there might come a time when I will have to do something drastic with my collection, so I can actually move around in the room a bit more freely.

But these records are my legacy, and this isn't going to happen any time soon.

So at least for right now, I am in a holding pattern with my records ... as I embark on obtaining the next 10,000 records in my collection.

And don't put it past me.

We all have our things.

I don't drink, smoke, nor chase after women.

I collect records.

I guess it is a vice, too, but a safe vice that doesn't hurt anyone, including myself.

Heck, that's the way I like it.

Uh huh, uh huh.