He Who Dies With the Most Toys…
I was thinking as I got my boat ready to go this spring. Yes, I have a boat, but I am not one of those wealthy guys who parks his little boat inside his big boat. I have a reasonable boat.
This is it.
What I was thinking as I did this chore was
We boomers like our toys.
Maybe, to be fair, it’s boomer guys who like toys. If I had the money I have spent on toys over my many years of adulthood, I would have a boat I could park my little boat inside.
Guys like me practically created a life philosophy out of the bumper sticker: He who dies with the most toys, wins!
Wins? We’ll see. Meanwhile here’s what I’ve crammed into my overcrowded toy box over the years.
Proto adulthood (16–21)
Muscle cars, weed paraphernalia, ridiculous turquoise jewelry, records (so many records.)
Early 20's
More records and astonishingly expensive stereo equipment. Guitars and amplifiers and mics and mic stands and so on. As money came along with a genuine job, more guitars and bigger amplifiers. We’re talking 6-foot tall behemoths, which we never could actually turn up past 2 in the crappy beer joints we played. But just in case we ever played Shea Stadium, I had the obligatory Marshall stack.
Well, I only had one. But, always felt I needed more.
This was before Craigslist and ebay, so trading toys was a little more work. You called a newspaper, put an ad in the classifieds and waited patiently by your landline for some sucker to call. Eventually a perfect stranger with extremely long, dirty hair would buy your (guitar/amp/stereo) for several hundred dollars in cash.
But that money didn’t sit in your pocket for long. There were new toys to buy.
Late 20's
British roadsters with electrical problems. They were incredibly cheap by current standards. Current standards have been heavily altered by the fact that many of my peers are deciding now in retirement it would be fun to have an Austin Healey 3000. Prices have skyrocketed. I had my fun in my late 20's.
And let’s skip ahead to when there was real money to be spent on toys. (40–55)
Expensive cameras. This phase involved many iterations. Nikon film cameras and of course, lenses. Leica film cameras and lenses. Nikon digital cameras and then ultimately Leica digital cameras. Finally sanity prevailed and once again, Nikon digital cameras to use with the lenses I could not sell on ebay.
Which brings us to the boat.
I always said I would never own a boat. “It’s a hole in the water into which you throw money.” At 55, I bought my first boat. But no one buys one boat. The new boat required the sale of the first boat. Selling a boat is not easy, but if you’ve bought and sold as many toys as I have over the years, you get pretty good at.
Acquiring crap and subsequently selling it so that you can acquire more crap becomes an art form after 40 years.
Now, in my retirement, I have time to unload some of the toys in my attic I never got around to selling. But I’m having trouble finding the motivation. Maybe I’m just not seeing a lot of other, new toys that I really want.
Even though I’ve often been first in line for the latest Apple gadget, my pulse doesn’t quicken in the least at the thought of owning the new Apple watch. If it had been the thing thirty years ago, I’d certainly have been first. Maybe I am finally growing out of it.
And there is the boat: my reasonably-sized 28' Cutwater Downeaster. True, it’s a potent symbol of 40+ years of acquisitiveness — and, well, wasted money. True, I could take it out this summer and look at all the other boats on the Chesapeake, and obsess about trading up once again.
But maybe — just maybe — I could take the boat out, feel the play of the sun and the breeze on my arms, and enjoy the simple pleasure of being on the water.
And wouldn’t that be rich?
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