*Insert clever response

I’ve done it! I started down the primrose path to a world of utter destruction. Where you can’t tell what is “yes” and what is “no”…the land of misfit necks. Heads are swollen, bodies are pint sized, and perpetual activity reigns supreme. I have fallen down this rabbit hole and now I won’t be able to get out. It’s a landslide or some kind of slide toward a way of life that leads to darkness. I tried not to, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. What started as a passing fancy is growing into an obsession…and a curse. You don’t expect these things, but you buy the ticket and pretty soon it just starts. Wow, I can’t believe I’ve rambled this long while being somewhat vague yet completely straightforward. It can be summed up in just one (or two, depending on your spelling) and it’s been around for decades.

What I am talking about, of course, is the bobblehead, also known as a bobbing head figurine, nodder, or wobbler, is a type of collectible figurine. Its head is often oversized compared to its body, allowing for the weight distribution which creates the bobble action. Instead of a solid connection, its head is connected to the body by a spring in such a way that a light tap will cause the head to bobble, hence the name. Although bobbleheads have been made with a wide variety of figures such as vampiric cereal pitchman Count Chocula, beat generation author Jack Kerouac, and Nobel-prize-winning geneticist James D. Watson, the figure is most associated with athletes, especially baseball players. Bobbleheads are sometimes given out to ticket buyers at sporting events as a promotion (referred to as an SGA or stadium give-away, this is how my passion sparked). Corporations including Taco Bell (the 'Yo Quiero Taco Bell' Chihuahua) , McDonald's (Ronald McDonald), and Empire Today (The Empire Man) have also produced popular bobbleheads of the characters used in their advertisements.

The earliest known reference to a bobblehead is thought to be in Nikolai Gogol's 1842 short story The Overcoat, in which the main character's neck was described as "like the necks of plaster cats which wag their heads". The modern era or the bobblehead began in the 1950s and by 1960, Major League Baseball had gotten in on the action and produced a series of papier-mâché bobblehead dolls, one for each team, all with the same cherubic face. Although successful in their own right, by the mid-1970s the bobblehead craze was in the process of winding down. It would take nearly two decades before bobbleheads returned to prominence. The first baseball team to offer a bobblehead giveaway was the San Francisco Giants, which distributed 35,000 Willie Mays head nodders at a 1999 game. My team, the Texas Rangers, has been giving away at least one a year for the past five or so years. I want to collect them all.

I don’t know why, but having all these bobbleheads has become a goal for me. This is nothing that consumes my entire life, but more than likely consuming significant amounts of my money. Since I can’t travel back in time to go to every game over the past few years that had a bobblehead giveaway, I have to be creative and cunning to track them down. There are many places to look to be honest with you. I once found one in a thrift store in Plano. It was just sitting there on a shelf, still in the box. That’s the jackpot, finding them mint in the box. It is like collecting anything else, if you have the packaging, it makes it just that much more valuable. I have all the boxes for my bobbleheads, just in case I need to move them for any reason. They take a prominent place on a shelf in my living room (a decision I made after a good friend questioned why I would keep them in the boxes locked away in a closet). I look over and they are poised, statuesque, in their positions of throwing, catching, or hitting (“You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball…YOU GOT IT!”)

I know what some of you are thinking. Don’t you already collect other stuff? Well, yes, and I move from collection to collection, focusing on one thing or the other as the fancy suits me. For the longest time in high school I collected antique Avon cologne bottles. They’re interesting. Avon made the bottles in all different shapes, like cars or buildings, which were mostly glass with plastic caps that would fit into the theme of the bottle’s shape. Then I moved on to flasks. I have an impressive collection of flasks. I don’t know why, but I do. If there ever comes a time where you are looking for the perfect way to move your beverage with cunning, then call me. After that I moved on to paint-by-number paintings. I have a paint-by-number gallery in my living room here. Paint by number (or painting by numbers) describes kits having a board on which light blue lines indicate areas to paint, each area having a number and a corresponding numbered paint to use. These are all paintings done by someone else. It is like having a piece of someone’s creativity and focus for just a few brief seconds. Now I have moved on to bobbleheads.

Right now I am watching six different stadium give-away bobbleheads on eBay. In fact, two of them are ending today. I have been trying to figure out how I can afford them and still get to the end of the month without having to sell stuff. Times are tough, but if you ask the bobbleheads, they are always positive (head nodding up and down). Wow, I’ve really run out of gas on this topic, so I’m out.