Section 5. Toothpick collection
In 1973, I had just begun taking entomology courses in college, and one class required that we turn in an insect collection at the end of the term. I wasn’t really “into” insects back then, but enjoyed trying to find the requisite number and variety of specimens necessary (obviously a symptom of my Second Pillar of Bob). And for any good zoological collection, just gathering a specimen was basically useless without including a label detailing key aspects of the collecting event: place, date, habitat/biological details, and the name of the collector. In fact, I had so much fun, that on a lark, that November I decided to start another collection.
But this wasn’t zoological in nature, it was restaurant toothpicks – you know, the ones with the colored plastic “frills” that come with your tuna melt, or the flattened ones saying “medium rare” on your cheeseburger. And like a good taxonomist, I was very diligent about my collecting and the accompanying labels. Not only did I note the dish I got the toothpick from, but also the restaurant/venue, date, if a dining companion ordered it, and any other interesting facts about the dining event (like if I was aboard a plane at the time) (Fig. 7.5.1). For years I kept the toothpicks stuck into a corkboard, but the corkboard began to fall apart, and I ended up just shoving the toothpicks in a box, and later forgetting about them.
That is, until 2021, when I found the box in my basement while looking for High School memorabilia for our upcoming 50th class reunion. Not only was I was surprised that I still had them, but there were a lot more than I remembered. So being the anal-retentive data-analyzing person I am, I put all this information into a database, adding notes about their physical characteristics (wood vs. plastic, round vs. flat, presence/lack of frills and their color; see Appendix H). There are a total of 164 items, dating from November 1973 to February 1984, which can now spark my memories about weddings I attended (like that of Charlotte Croall & Paul Bueselinck in 1974), entomology trips into the San Joaquin Valley (assisting someone’s project to coat potatoes with an anti-pathogenic material before planting), numerous ski trips to the Sierras, Scottish Country Dance parties and workshops I attended, and even hanging out at the Prince of Wales pub in San Mateo on the eve of the wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana.
And thus when considering the remarkable memories in my (generally unremarkable) life, this project may be the most idiosyncratic, since (as Pete Oboyski pointed out) it extends to five levels of weirdness:
Level 1: Collecting something as mundane as toothpicks.
Level 2: Recording the data for each item.
Level 3: Storing the specimens so they could later be retrieved.
Level 4: Databasing the collecting information.
Level 5: Publishing my findings.