Do you have a shelf? I’m betting you do. I don’t mean just a regular shelf for regular things. I mean a glorious shelf of the amazing things. The shelf that when people come to visit look up and down to see what you’re into, what you love, and how you like show that all off.
We have a shelf, or, shelves like that in our house. We call it The Shelves of Great Nerdery. A place to keep all the little things we’ve collected over the years as a showcase of what we want people to associate with us. Totems of our lifestyle.
I’ve seen all kinds of shelves dedicated to all sorts of things. Action figures lined up by release dates with each shelf a different toy line. Shelves made of old hard back books bought in bulk at an auction house. Anime DVDs bookended by anime VHS tapes. All shapes and all sizes. So what is it that makes us naturally want to build a shelf? We put things upon it like a trophy case where the ‘best in show’ ribbon came in a blister pack. Be it one shelf or a dedicated room this seems to be in our DNA for all who collect stuff of some kind.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a nicely designed shelf can say a lot about what you want others to perceive of you. Row’s of Xbox games towering next to a large TV: “I’m a gamer”. A dedicated shelf overflowing with con badges and event pictures: “I like to go to conventions”. Some shelf obsessions go even further and more specific if that is important to that person. A shelf of one brand of tea containers, new and old, that sits over a breakfast nook that has bay window with space between each container for a book: “I like to have my favorite tea while I sit and read with the sun coming through the window.”
What is on a shelf, how everything is arranged, and why it was added are all parts of the story. Let’s dissect one of my shelves as an example.
- 1. A custom card with the text ‘you blew it’ in fancy lettering a comic friend of mine hands out at bars from time to time
- 2. 12” Boba Fett figure. One of the few remaining items from my Star Wars addiction days.
- 3. Issues 1-3 of Ranma 1/2. The only time the manga was ever in full color. My first convention purchase ever (1997).
- 4. A Buddha statue from the first time I visited the Ft. Worth Japanese Gardens
- 5. Voltron mini figures. One of the few items I didn’t sell off of my near complete Voltron collection
- 6. Stack of Yotsuba manga. Because if you ever need a smile just pick one up and read it.
- 7. A tea cup my girlfriend bought from the now closed Japanese Sakura Taisen Cafe
- 8. Panda-Z imported figure that was gifted to me by an old friend who had “too much shit that needed to find a new home”
- 9. Prinny fans from Anime Expo the year I was told about Disgaea. A game my girlfriend obsesses over.
- 10. Disney’s The Black Hole puzzle I’ve had since I was 5
- 11. The two way pager that I got from my first college internship designing websites at Motorola (Thank you HTML for Dummies!). This bad boy saved my ass multiple times in college. I don’t think the plan was suppose to go for an extra year but I sure was happy it did.
- 12. 5-Barrel rum bottle from the first vacation to Belize my girlfriend and I took together. My first vacation that didn’t involve me going to a Disney park, taking my daughter to a Disney park, or some random college spring break adventure.
- 13. What remains of my original Magic The Gathering collection from high school. Including cards I made up that for some reason my friends actually let me play in real games.
All these stories condensed into a 4 foot space. A level of efficiency Twitter should be envious of.
Your shelf can also acts as a timeline of your fandom. The shelf you started in high school (an old wine glass rack I filled with anime VHS tapes in my case) can say just as much about you as your yearbook photo. As your fandom evolves so does your shelf. You may have even changed out your shelf entirely. Big in to baseball as a kid, Gundam model kits in college, and now it’s Criterion Collection Blu-rays and rare 35mm prints of classic films. Like moving from a 6-pack of Bud Light to bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, your tastes have grown with you.
Do you have a shelf? I would love to hear all about it and see any pictures if you got them. If the comments section below doesn’t allow pictures feel free to share them on my Facebook page or Tweet them at me.
Who it was that married ‘worth ten thousand words’ with ‘picture’ isn’t known, but we do know that the phrase is American in origin.