There’s a show on TV about people who have a disorder called disposophobia, a condition marked by an obsessive need to accumulate possessions (even if they are worthless.) These people live in houses covered floor to ceiling in stuff, and look quite unwell. I haven’t seen the show, but as a pack rat (two notches below hoarder on the crazy scale) I can somewhat empathize with their condition. After all, this is what my wallet looks like:
Just in case you wanted to know, there are exactly zero packets of ketchup in there. I don’t know where that rumor started but I want to debunk it publicly. (The packets in question mysteriously disappeared a long time ago.)
I must admit though, that I am a little worried about Malcolm’s tendencies in this area. He has, over the years, amassed a good number of stuffed animals. All 500 of them currently live in a tent in his room and they are packed in there quite snugly. 
I can only guess the extent to which the tent turns into a synthetic fiber filled hedonistic free for all late at night, but during the day time it looks safe enough. He goes in the tent occasionally and talks to the animals, but, sadly, they speak a language I am unfamiliar with. It is somewhere between Scottish and chipmunk, and evidently spoken quite quickly. I once attempted to thin the herd a little, but the moment I separate a few stragglers from the pack, Malcolm got wise to it and asked about the animals I had targeted for taking to the great tent in the sky (Goodwill.) The little bugger knows his flock!
The other red flags come from something Malcolm calls his “cubby.” 
This box used to store tickets my mom gave Malcolm. Now it stores everything in his life he finds interesting. It is a cardboard wasteland of baseball cards, old batteries, random lego pieces and what appeared to be several empty packets of ketchup. He doesn’t do anything with the cubby, he just carries it around the house like a villain carries around a menacing looking cat. If you try to look inside the cubby or even worse, empty out the entire box and threaten to put it all away, he completely freaks out and asks that we respect his “privacy.” Every time I can’t find something I need, (vegetable peeler, phone, stamps) my first move is to track down the cubby and look in there. I don’t know what’s going on in that tiny little brain of his, I just hope that he doesn’t end up on some reality show someday. If he takes cubby into the tent and screams Scottish-Chipmunk about the polar bear getting frisky with Lamby, he’ll probably get one though.
Tags: messiness
Loading ...
If we are looking for some of the new mayo, should we look inside the ketchup packages in the cubby in the tent in Malcolm’s room?
Will the cubby be coming to Reno?
go malcolm!!!!
have some tickets set aside to bring up—perhaps NOT!!!
i have been in the tent—-reading or making up stories, and getting instructions on life in general from the boy—-great fun!