Of Bolts and Bottle Caps

When I was growing up a neighbor kid on my street collected bottle caps. He didn't just collect them, he hoarded them, by the bag loads. Funny thing is, when you're a kid, this sort of behavior isn't taken as being overly strange by anyone. In fact, to the other kids it seems kind of cool, a thing everybody else on the block secretly wishes they'd thought of first.

Wow, man. That's a lot of bottle caps!

It's only when you get to be an adult when the impulse to take arbitrary things to ridiculous extremes is questioned. It might even be classified as clinical, possibly as an obsessive or compulsive disorder. You know you're grown up when people start cautiously asking, "so, how many bottle caps do you think will be enough?" 

As if it's a goal, or something.

People who've never obsessed about anything will never get it. They've probably never collected anything in their lives. If they did, they'd know: it isn't a goal, it's a process.

I'm a fan of obsession, so long as whatever you are obsessing over isn't harmful to you, let alone, to someone else. So am not the least bit ashamed to be obsessed with my new BoltEV. I want to know everything about it, including when it will get here, and the very minute when I will first set eyes on it.

What I know today is it's on a train rumbling west, somewhere between here and Illinois. Clickity-clack, clickity-clack. I hear the sound in my sleep. 

It may have crossed your mind that when my Bolt is delivered, it will be one of the very few around. Practically nobody will have seen a Bolt before. Anyone who drives one can expect to be questioned by strangers in parking lots for months to come.

So for my obsessions I might be the cool kid on the block, for a little while, at least. Hey, one of the rewards of obsession is maybe somebody will get it, and think it's cool. And when that ends, that will be cool, too. Next obsession, coming up.

I wonder if that kid up the street kept his bags of bottle caps, or at some point threw them away and decided to become a real adult. Most people do.

Clickity-clack, clickity-clack.