My wife and I don't take many out-of-state trips together, but when we do, the destination is usually Walt Disney World. And when we go, Ashley likes to dress on theme each day. This has led to a rather large collection of assorted Minnie Mouse ears which she has amassed to properly accent each outfit.

This week, it became obvious she is well into the planning stages on our next Disney trip later this year. For two straight days, I returned home to find a package containing another version of Minnie ears on our porch. 

I'm in no position to judge her collection, even as a portion of our kitchen wall becomes overrun by mouse ears. I'm no stranger to frivolous collections myself. 

I've always been drawn to collecting things. As a kid I collected interesting rocks I found and kept them in a Whitman Sampler box.  I collected magazines and comic books, most of which I still have (Maybe I should take a look and see if they're worth anything now). I have a pretty big collection of Star Wars memorabilia. Ashley and I both collect movie and concert posters from events we have attended. Our poster collection is limited only by wall space.

Perhaps my largest collection, and the one which renders me unable to criticize anything Ashley collects, consists of ball caps. From my first cap, a Barr's Railroad Salvage cap issued to me by my T-ball team, I was fascinated with ball caps and began getting as many as I could. My childhood bedroom was lined with caps along all four walls in a line near the ceiling, most of them being a variety of Dallas Cowboys caps. 

Over the years, buying caps is something I've never grown out of. There's no telling how many Cowboys, Vandy, Atlanta Braves, and MTSU caps I have. I certainly have hundreds if not thousands of caps stashed away in one place or another (A basement is a great thing to have).

The largest chunk of that collection consists of Nashville Predators caps, many of them autographed. Once the hockey bug bit me when the team began in 1998, for a while I felt like I should get a new hat every time I went to a game. And I went to LOTS of games. The every-game hat was before marriage and a house payment came into the picture, so that habit has been curtailed, but I still get one or two new Preds caps per season. At this point, if the Preds pro shop ever ran out of hats, I feel like I could personally restock their hat wall.

I suppose there is something in human nature which drives us all to collect things of interest to us. Maybe it's the hunter-gatherer instinct which, when no longer required to drive us to find food to survive, manifests itself in an urge to buy up whatever trinkets strike our fancy. Many of us may even one day realize we have a large collection of something we weren't conciously making an effort to collect. Collections can be sneaky.

So before you criticize what anyone else chooses to collect, maybe take a look around to see what you've collected. 

Standard Managing Editor Seth Wright can be reached at editor@southernstandard.com