When I was a kid I loved to collect things: stickers, erasers, pogs, rocks & gems & shells, and troll dolls. I had boxes of stickers arranged by color. A box of erasers, arranged by size and color, one of which (a tiny strawberry), I shoved into my right nostril when I was 5 and then proceeded to panic until I could muster up enough snot force to rocket it out of my head.
I’m sure you wanted to know that little tid-bit….
I had rocks and gems and shells, arranged by color and lustre. And Pogs, remember those? I also had a colored-coded stack of pogs capped off by my hologram Lion King slammer. My troll dolls lived on a shelf, in a row, and the ones with the bejeweled belly buttons were (surprise!) color coded. Are you seeing a pattern here? If there was a collection of items in varying colors, I would arrange them into a rainbow. It’s just how I rolled (and still do, I love to organize by color).
This also applies to cookies. See, when I would visit my grandparents they always had store-bought jam thumbprints in at least 3 flavors. I would get my little plate of cookies and arrange and rearrange them according to their jewel-toned bellies. Then I would systematically eat the outer cookie ring, leaving the jammy centers for last.
I was a weird kid, it’s okay. I know.
Now, as an adult, I try not to collect too much…I have Hoarder-phobia…which means I watch Hoarders nonstop on Netflix, then I purge my apartment of any and all unnecessary or unused items. This has yet to affect my book and cookbook collections ( we have a storage closet full of books, sigh) and serve-ware/small plate/bowls/utensils hoard….I mean collection.
Also, as an “adult”, I make cookies from scratch. The jam in these, unlike the cookies of my childhood, is not gummy. Also, they contain ground nuts. You can do a variety of jam fillings and arrange them in a cookie rainbow if you feel so compelled. Or, you can do one jam filling so your adult friends will stop making fun of you for being all rainbows and unicorns…or whatever.
