Searching For Something Vague (At Least In The Title, To Attempt To Interest You Into Reading To Discover What The Something Vague Is)

Most people have them, many have multiple, one is never enough, yet fifteen seems like too many.Not talking about tattoos here (bad enough I have to pay for shots which hurt, why pay for extended needle pains that contain images that will haunt me in my sixties), or piercings, or cars, or snack foods, or fleas and head lice. I'm talking about hobbies. I've been searching for years for a hobby. I've started down the path towards different hobbies, but inevitably I don't commit to it and give up. Alec Baldwin had a cool and unique hobby in 30 Rock, it was hilarious and gave me an idea, but I couldn't commit to collecting cookie jars like him as I'm more interested in what is meant to be in the cookie jar. Actually there isn't much I do commit to outside of God, family and ministry.

Hobbies I guess can range from skills, to activities and sports, and collections. There may be more, I'm no expert. My dad is a gifted brass musician who tried to pass on his gift to me. From fifth grade when I carried a 30 year old horn to school in a suitcase because we had no case, an all through high school I played the euphonium and trombone, trying my best to be a band geek. No matter how much I worked and practiced, I was never more than a mediocre player. I gave up after I finished training school when I was booted off my instrument of thirteen years to play Tuba (a great fat guy stereotype, as mentioned by Terence Howard in Mr. Holland's Opus) so that a flutist could play euphonium in my place. This is not to offend my flutist friend, who is a very dear friend, but sitting in my shoes....I was pretty depressed about it. That was the end of my band geek phase.

At our divisional congress this year I was told to play in the band with most of the Divisional Commanders (bosses) from around the western U.S. This confirmed my lost band geekiness, as I was terrible and I knew it and for some reason playing didn't excite me like it used to. There went that hobby, though I did enjoy band in seminary as it was a fun time of venting and jokes and probably some of the best fellowship I've ever experienced in a small group (plus I had and have a lot of respect for that teacher, as his actions in and outside of class were always the same). So, I truly am a reformed band geek.

I wanted to play piano, and learned a bit, but haven't committed to it and usually end up just messing around doing impressions of great players. I do these impressions so often at a keyboard that now, no joke, my son has picked up my Ray Charles impression and does it ALL THE TIME, in fact he does it at grocery stores for reasons I can only guess are to flirt with the ladies. I have a guitar and lots of accessories and keep saying I'll learn, but on my day off I'm here typing instead of stringing and learning so I guess that hasn't panned out too much, but I do hope it will.

I am currently wearing a T-shirt with the Dutch word for father on it. Impressed by my bi-lingual abilities? I just happen to know that Vader means Father so I am wearing a Star Wars T-shirt. For years I tried that as my hobby. I love the movies, watch them constantly, kick butt at Star Wars trivia games (except with questions regarding the names of the Imperial Officers, they all die anyway so who needs to remember Piett, Jerjerrod, Tarkin, Needa, Veers and Ozzel or what they like). However, Veers was also Donovan, the bad guy in The Last Crusade who ended up a skeleton who disintegrated, so I tend to remember him.

I collected all the toys throughout most of my childhood. That is until I was about fifteen or sixteen and had my own job and car and my parents said they wouldn't buy them for me any more. Turns out those darn pieces of plastic are expensive and not conducive to collecting on a limited pocketbook. I don't know how my parents afforded it, other than I think my dad may have sold his kidney on the black market while we lived in L.A. I still have them and recently tried to sell them on E-Bay with no results. So, when he's old enough to decide whether he wants to play with them or keep them until they are worth something since they are all still wrapped, my son will receive my Star Wars toys. There went that hobby.Sports! Baseball is fun, when you're swinging. But if you don't hit hard enough, you have to run, and that gets you dirty and/or causes perspiration-who wants that. Hockey is fun to watch and I think would be fun to play-but I can't skate and am terribly afraid of breaking my coccyx. Football is just plain boring to me, seriously. Football and wrestling looks like an excuse for men to hug without feeling less manly about it. Then there's soccer, where you kick a ball while running, not fun plus I feel the likelihood of getting kicked in a sport all about kicking is very rampant. Also, I'm too tall AND too short to be a good basketball player.

I do have some favorite sports teams. However this is mostly for conversation's sake because every man I know at least has a couple of favorite teams in some kind of sport. So my favorite baseball teams are the San Diego Padres because my dad's family is from San Diego and I just happen to love San Diego and the Seattle Mariners because Seattle is the closest city to my home (Alaska) to have a baseball team. My favorite hockey teams are the Ducks because I love the color orange and I like Disney and have always loved the Mighty Ducks movies and think that the hockey team was a great way of doing some not so subtle advertising (I'm surprised there weren't any hidden mickeys in the arena like at Disneyland) and the Canucks because like Seattle, Vancouver is the closest city to my home to have a professional hockey team (the Aces don't count, no matter what you say). I do like the Sharks too because they have a cool logo and cool color combinations. Obviously, sports are not me.

Movies are a pretty good hobby I have. There are many movie references in my every day lingo, in Haines it confuses people a lot but hey its who I am. I could spend all day watching movies, but over the past few years when I do that I feel as if I lost a day just to watch Alicia Silverstone mispronounce Haitian and face off against Mystery Inc and kick box with Uma Thurman and creep me out by stalking Mr. Robin Hood men in tights himself. Seriously, if you're snowed in, you might want to try doing a movie marathon of watching all the movies you have with a certain actor in it. But if you do a Paul Rudd marathon you have to devote a couple of days because that guy is in a lot of movies. So, I've laid off a bit. Well, as much as I can considering that we don't have cable at our house.

I love video games. The Nintendo Wii has provided me with ample new gaming experiences since I bought it. I can play guitar with Aerosmith or battle with a guitar player Rage Against the Machine whom I don't know. I can swing a wand with the best of them while saying expelliarmus even if the game can't hear me. But my real love is for the lego games. Lego Batman, Lego Star Wars, Lego Indy, and the top of my Christmas wish list, Lego Harry Potter. I've been playing Lego Batman almost exclusively for a year and a half now. I think during vacation I will be able to finish the game completely, because I just have to see the progress bar say 100% completed. Then I will obsessively move on to Indy. But, I can only play for a few hours at a time as I find myself aging because apparently I don't blink and my eyes get super red and painful making it hard for me to sleep. I'm hoping to play tonight when the kids are asleep so I'm writing now, since I haven't played video games for about three weeks. With long spurts of time without playing, I don't think I can call myself a true video game hobbyist.

I started a lightsaber collection, but I had to stop because its expensive and what the heck am I going to do with a bunch of plastic swords that light up and say buzz. I did use them as flashlights in seminary to light my path and also enable me to pretend to be a jedi as I battled away the raccoons.

Though, now, I think I have found my hobby. It is a collecting hobby. I collect creative Potato Heads. It started with Darth Tater, and went down on to Luke Frywalker, Princess Tater, Yam Solo, R2 Pota-two, Darth Spud, Spuda Fett, Spud Trooper, Indiana Spud, Spida Spud, Optimash Prime and Bumble Spud. It is an extensive and cool collection and I care very deeply about it. Three of them are in my office at work and the others adorn the mantle place in our house (you know where most people keep expensive stuff). I never realized how important they were to me, or that they were truly my hobby until today when my wife dusted them and I wanted to be right behind her making sure that she didn't knock them over or move their limbs while she took the thin layer of dust off of them. It may seem a little bit obsessive, but hey at least I have a hobby now.

BLT says.......So many people collect stamps or baseball cards or coins, hobbies should be more unique. I mean, do you know anybody else who collects plastic potatoes?