Signs of Age

What is it with people? Or, perhaps, what is it with people on the internet? I’m continually (amazed, baffled, perplexed, confused, exasperated; pick any two) by people who seem to want everything they own to be not just a possession but an “investment”, and part of a “collection”. I don’t think it’s caused by the recent downward spiral of the economy; these folks were around back when the Almighty Dollar was still mighty, being obsessive-compulsive over everything.

I like cameras, and have several, but I don’t pamper them the way so many seem to. So they have scratches and dents and various other marks on them; big deal. They’re tools, meant to be used, not stored in their original boxes in climate-controlled vaults until you retire. The same goes with fountain pens - I love them, but what’s the point of owning one you can’t (that is, won’t, because it would ruin the “value”) write with?

I keep seeing it with flashlight nuts, on the various flashlight forums - everyone wants their flashlights to be hard-anodized, so they don’t show any signs of use. We’re not talking about limited-edition made-for-collectors lights, either, but $20 semi-generic ones made in China by the thousands.

I can understand wanting to have “nice” things, and there’s a widespread school of thought that states the importance of appearance. But, there’s a huge gap between “pristine” and “abused and uncared for”, which so many seem to overlook. Is it a symptom of the tendency for today’s products to be inherently lower quality than they were in decades past - before things were made to be obsolete in a few years’ time - a recognition that modern consumer goods are so cheap they need to be pampered to survive? Or just some widespread sort of avarice? I don’t really know. I (cynically) suspect it’s a symptom of a long-rising trend to favor style - that is, appearance - over substance; yeah, everything you own is, frankly, crap, but at least you take care of it well…

Well, just to annoy these collectors and pamperers of mundane, everyday objects, here are photos of two items I use every day, showing the full signs of their well-used, unpampered lives:

That’s my trackball, a fairly inexpensive Kensington one that I’ve had for about five years. As you can see, a lot of the paint is worn away, and repeated use has started to wear down the actual plastic on it. Nonetheless, it’s still going strong.

…and that’s my EDC pocket knife - a CRKT folding thingy from many years ago. CRKT use “cute” names for all of their smaller knives, and I believe that this model was a limited edition of their PECK - itself a smaller version of the KISS knife (get it?) - called the “PECK in the Dark”. It’s a great knife, but as you can see, the teflon coating, while novel, was not really a great idea. (Clearly, cuteness won out over practicality among the Columbia River Knife and Tool folks.)

As I said above, I don’t get the whole pamper-everything-you-own, make-everything-an-investment attitude. Perhaps it’s just vanity? I don’t pamper my belongings, or get bent out of shape when they show signs of honest use - nor do I dye my hair, which is turning grey at alarming rates. Which deadly sin is that again? They keep saying that memory is the second thing to go when you get old; the first is… what?

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