Smithsonian Magazine
I love this magazine. It’s the only magazine I can read cover
to cover, spending hours staring at the photographs and longing to get in my
car that minute and drive off to the airport to that exotic place I just read
about. These articles bring out the wanderlust in me that is insatiable.
My mother used to give me a subscription every year at
Christmas time and every year I was grateful because I love this magazine. There
was only one problem. I couldn’t part with these magazines even after I had
finished reading every article, sometimes more than once; even after I had
dropped this magazine in the bathtub which was now a harden blob of paper. I
would peel those pages apart and read the articles again. I just couldn’t throw
this magazine.
To break me of this habit, I started ripping specific
articles out of the magazine and sending them to my friends and family whom I
thought would be interested in the articles. This task was becoming expensive
and time-consuming. But it didn’t matter because it allowed me to get rid of
the magazines piling up in my house. Once a magazine was that about 75% ripped
out, I could finally bring myself throw the rest of the magazine out.
And when my mother
died and my Christmas gift stopped coming to me, I finally found myself without
any of these remnants of this wonderful magazine. I miss this magazine. And
when I see a copy of it in a friend’s house, I must do everything I can to
restrain myself from asking, ”Are you finished with this month’s copy of the
Smithsonian? May I have it?” I don’t ask this question. I know it’s my best
interest not to start up this little hoarding behavior again. I know I can now
only read this magazine in a public library where I recognize that it is not
worth a criminal record to accidentally on purpose take some of the back issues
(which we all know no one ever reads so what’s the big deal) and quietly and
without malice, stuff them in my backpack and walk out, hoping not to be
noticed and stopped.
I am sure there is a therapy group for this affliction which
I am calling Sufferers of Smithsonian Affection Disorder (SO SAD).
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