What is your oldest possession? Perhaps it is a trophy you collected as a kid from little league. Maybe your parents saved a favorite toy or stuffed animal from your toddler days. Others have collectibles like snow globes or ticket stubs from a long forgotten trip to see the Ice Capades. For me, it is an old AM/FM radio that I received as either a birthday or Christmas present. I used to listen to this radio for hours every day when I was a kid. Of course this was back in the days before cable television or even more than 3 or 4 channels. I guess that I would say at one time, this radio was one of my most prized possessions, one of the things that I would never want to give up. It was so important to me.Now, more than 30 years later, the radio sits on a shelf in my office at work. It waits patiently. I'm sure that I have not even plugged it in for more than 20 or 25 years. Still it waits. One of the cool things about the unit was that besides just picking up frequencies associated with AM and FM stations, this one could pick up bits and pieces of airplane communications, and on occasion, if the atmospheric conditions were right, you might even hear broken and crackly snippets from citizen's band radio transmissions.
The fact that I still have this radio is a testament to the fact that I am a bit of a packrat. Once I have something, I don't like to let it go. I'm continually facscinated by how our mindset toward our stuff changes over time. One day my radio is the most special and important thing I have, then it is set aside for something else. Destined to be pushed into the back of the closet. To be forgotten and discarded. Sometimes, if we are fortunate enough to stumble upon them again down the road of our lives, we can relive those special times of listening to the Red Sox ballgames or the captivating top 40 countdowns from Casey Kasem, and we can reconnect, if only briefly, with those comforting pursuits of childhood.
