Love and Collecting

I have been thinking all week about something that happened to me on Valentines Day. And I am curious if anyone else has experienced this.

For Valentine’s Day weekend, I agreed to take my wife to a marriage seminar that was being put on at a local church. It was a 2 day event that focused on love and respect and all the other gooey things that marriages should entail. It wasn’t cheap either, and part of the deal was that I couldn’t complain and had to act like I really liked it. You know, kind of like working at Beckett.

Anyway, I share this because of what happened afterwards. My kids were at the out-laws, so we didn’t have plans on Saturday afternoon. So after the seminar ended, my wife actually suggested that we go to the local card shop together. This has never happened in nearly 8 years of marriage, and to be honest, I was unsure how I felt about it. It’s my hobby, and my thing. There are just some things, like golf, that you would rather do without your woman. But I put those feelings aside and floored it in the manly-van to the shop. A funny thing happened there. As she was encouraging me to open some packs, she actually got into the game.

You see, the fear in involving someone like your wife in your hobby is that they will suck the fun out of it. It’s the same reason why you can’t be married and watch MTV. There is no pride to be gained by watching the Real World with your spouse.

We started with some SP Authentic Football. I was hoping to show her a nice patch. But why bother as my luck with this product has been beyond ugly this year. I got some lineman auto, a Cason auto and a Morelli auto. If you are counting, yeah, that’s 3 autos with no patch or veteran auto.

Here is where it happened. She looked at me and instead of saying, “Well, that was a waste of money. Why do you bother with this stupid hobby?” (Not that I wasn’t thinking that myself, but dang it, that’s for me to think. I don’t want to hear it from anyone else). She actually said, “What else can we open. I want you to get something good.” You can imagine my surprise. To make a long story short, we tried some Contenders and got a Mendenhall Auto #/25. Enough to satisfy and justify the visit.

Now I don’t imagine that my wife will be going with me to the shop very often, if ever. But I will be the first to say that it was very meaningful to have her there to share in the hobby for once. And it was very fun to see her catch a little buzz from opening packs, even if she was just “not complaining and acting like she wanted to be there”. And yes, insert your bedroom joke here.

I bring this up because it got me thinking. Does anyone out there share their hobby with their significant other? If so, to what level. And by significant other, I don’t mean your Chad Johnson Fat Head.