Adella's Stash

In my basement, Adella found a folded up rolling file box from my teaching days. I showed her how to open it up and position the bottom to make it a fully functional box with wheels. Big mistake. Too late did I realize I was clearly enabling her, for my dear, sweet four-year-old granddaughter has a a touch of kleptomania mixed with a bit of hoarding disorder. (Perhaps the same impulse that compels children to fill their pockets with rocks.)

Adella has a habit of going through the rooms of my house "lifting" things and placing them in her latest collection receptacle--bag, backpack, basket, and now file box. This habit is not unlike that of her mother who stole Barbie clothes on play dates, Tic Tacs from Bradlees, and a rubber stamp from Treasure Island. (I do not think the bankruptcies of either establishment is directly related to Chrissy's petty crimes.) The increased carrying capacity of her new box allows Adella not only to greatly expand her growing collection, but to also cart her goods much more efficiently throughout the house.

There is no rhyme or reason to Adella's pilfering, as is evidenced by this most recent inventory of the box:

 

• Novel Sea-Wolf by Jack London (not one of my favorites--leftover from a naturalism class in graduate school) 
• Miniature copy of The Declaration of Independence
• The Red Prophet by Orson Scott Card 
• The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl  
• Pink Floyd, Pulse CD 
• Mozart CD 
• Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas CD 
• A recorder (musical, not mechanical)
• Random USB cord 
• Star Craft Strategy Guide 
• A Hewlett Packard printer ink cartridge, unused
• 3- 3 1/2 inch floppy drive disks 
• Vintage plastic Pokemon wallet 
• This year's new Christmas ornament from my visit to James Madison's home Montpelier 
• Barbie picture frame (from a Happy Meal 20-25 years ago)

And this is just today's haul. 

As I consider the stash, I conclude Adella clearly must be planning for her future. She does not yet know how to read, nor can she operate a CD player--should she be able to find one in the house and add it to her box. Nonetheless, she will be prepared for the day when her abilities allow her to fully access the treasures hidden in her collection. Although I suspect by the time she learns to read or she finds a CD player, she will no longer be interested, for much of her eclectic collecting style is most undoubtedly related to the fact she finds an object with reasonably compelling cover art that she can add to her collection without being detected. 

I am still not sure how to explain her attraction to the printer cartridge and the floppy drive disks. But someday I will tell her what the disks were used for in the "old days."

I should put her haul away. But I am not actually sure just where she found everything, and she would only collect it again anyway. For now we will let her stash be. I take heart in the fact that Chrissy, her mother, in her pursuit of happiness, clearly overcame her kleptomania and has become an outstanding, contributing member of society.