Philately Fetish

Or, Passing Fancy #23,346.

Lately I've renewed an interest - which will almost certainly pass - in philately, the collecting of postage stamps. An odd, sudden fixation, but it doesn't surprise me in the least, because I have a favorite Christmas memory involving stamp collecting.

I was probably around five years old. I'm pretty sure my mother's sister Ann (who is nucking futs) was over for Christmas, or it may just be that she had sent us all presents (this was probably the case... she lived in England). In any event, the day before Christmas, I couldn't resist but to sneak over to the tree and yoink! a present and open it. Inside was a beginner's stamp collecting kit. Being a fetishist for collecting things, and an admirer of pictures (and design, though I'd no clue of such an art form at the time), I was delighted. It was easily my favorite present received that year!

I immediately set to work and began licking the used stamps from many different countries and sticking them into their places throughout the album (I'd no clue what the little gummy slips of film were for, but knew that stamps were licked and placed). However, the guilt of stealing a present a day early did gnaw at me, and I - with appropriate shame - tried to hide the gift, messily thrown back together, with individual stamps flitting out and about, under my bed.

Amusingly, looking back on it now, I can recall that our bed frames were high above the floor, and our bedroom (which I shared with brother John at the time) had no carpet, and so anything "hidden" under the bed could not have stood out more to even the most casual eye. My memory here is vague, but I don't think I was punished for this; in fact, soon after, we were allowed the unwrapping of one gift each on all following Christmas Eves. So even then, I was a revolutionary, that through civil disobedience, brought me and my fellows one step forward toward... well, getting whatever it is that I wanted at the time. A true leader among men!

My brothers had actually received the same gift from Auntie Ann, and we three ended up subscribing to this service which seems peculiar and antiquated to me now: every week or so, some company would send us small transparent envelopes containing a small set of stamps, and each envelope was printed with a description of the set and its price. The deal was that one would either keep the stamps and send the money, or return the stamps. I have to admit... we often just kept them and didn't pay. Well, the company didn't actually have any means of recourse, since they were operating on an honor system. I imagine that they stopped sending us our "trial" envelopes after some amount of loss on their part.

Our grandfather - my mother's father - was a mighty philatelist, and this fetish was passed on to his three daughters, so it was inevitable that, in time, the stamp collecting bug would bite we three boys. I remember our grandparents' living room (this was in Hove, England, a suburb of Brighton), with its many musty old books, which included Grandpa Jack's stamp albums. It must have been a summer in the late 70's that we were there (me being perhaps seven or eight years old), and we boys had all brought our stamp collections along with us. I remember sitting with my granddad in his library/living room, he showing off his stamp collection, and I mine. I remember vividly how he reacted when he saw that I had a full sheet of new, mint condition stamps of portraits of each of our U.S. presidents (not licked and pasted onto a page... for by now I was no novice!). They were actually only stickers, and not stamps, I said, but my grandfather contradicted this determinedly. I remained adamant in my assertion - for I couldn't see any numeric value on the things - but, seeing as how he was a bit older and more experienced than I, I guess he was probably right. With great fondness and amusement, I remember how, not only did he insist that these were stamps, but that he wanted them! I have no idea whether I gave them to him or not. I hope I did.

Grandpa Jack was a great and gentle man. The classic "kind soul." He had various jobs when he was alive; one of them I know to be that of furniture mover. He was one of the select few that owned a van during the war, and my mother has told me more than once about how he and his van were always there to help people relocate or otherwise get out of danger. I wish I had a picture of him from that time. My mother has also mentioned her own recollection of that time, albeit only briefly. Perhaps many of her memories were left forgotten as a survival technique for moving on after the war, but she has stated more than once her memory of hiding under the kitchen table, terrified, as the sirens blared.

Anyway, I do actually have a photo of my grandfather from when I knew him at my young age, and I should scan it in, along with many other photos. I'll post it once I do; it's a great, sweet picture of this elderly fellow showing off a magnificent - large and pink! - flower in his well-kept English garden. Grandpa Jack died just a couple of years later, and my brothers and I visited him in his death bed shortly before he passed. We were beginning a year-long stay in England (a very formative experience in my life), and he lay there... gently, as was his manner. I never knew my grandfather on the other side, my dad's dad (and from the sound of him, I'm better off for it), but Jack... he's a great figure and a great memory.

Should I play sentimental and grab up a stamp album? Or will this be a passing fancy (one of many, all my life)?

Well, that's my Christmas memory: my favorite one. Even better than the time I got a scientific calculator, complete with a pouch that I could hang from my belt (and oh yes, I did)!

So, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Jolly Kwanzaa, Sweet Solstice, Happy Holidays and all of that business.

And now, I will listen to Yello's version of "Jingle Bells," just to be a cheesy bastard.