John Lennon & My Uncle

I heard a story in NPR this morning that got me to thinking...

As a wee tot, I spent most of my time at my grandmother's house, with my aunt and uncle. I thought my uncle was the coolest thing on the planet. I idolized him and everything he did.

So when I was about 5, and he was 16, we used to sit at the dining room table with a big, orange cheap cotton bag of newly procured stamps and spend hours sorting, dividing and arranging the new acquisitions into our stamp albums. He bought me a paperback stamp album, less than a quarter of an inch thick, and he worked in this hefty three ring binder book. We would commandeer the table all night, drinking coffee (yes, I drank coffee at 5), and playing with the paraphenalia of stamp collecting: scissors, tweezers, plastic hinges, a small dish of water for said hinges, and a little world atlas to reference strange and exotic foreign countries.

Lots of great stuff can come from stamp collecting. You learn about geography, and all kinds of other interesting stuff from the colorful pictures on stamps (animals, art, politics), and you learn about visual organization as you work on a page. It teaches you patience and hand-eye coordination. And you learn to be still. Even when you are wired on caffeine.

So this NPR story was about the Smithsonian acquiring John Lennon's stamp collection.

My uncle collected stamps. So did John.
My uncle was an artist. So was John.
My uncle played guitar. So did John.

I worshipped by uncle and wanted to be just like him. Never had any feelings for Lennon.