I had a friend (still have the friend, though we don’t have regular access to each other anymore) who liked to “show off” how obscure some of his possessions were, possibly to achieve the “wanderlust effect” (i.e. the reaction of “how did you get these here”). Something about the anticipation that his inventory was alien to whoever he showed.
One day, he was asked to bring games and a console and he brought one of those extremely rare knock-off bootleg gaming consoles they sell in Asia, which we’re not even remotely near.
“What the heck is that” asked my other best friend?
“It’s the Mega Duck. I brought CFGP with me too.”
“Why can’t you be a normal Upstate New Yorker? We literally got Playstation.”
“What fun is that?”
It wasn’t some small quirk either. One day he took a long walk and came across a part of the area nobody had been to in decades and took pictures with my camera which he happened to have. Also having hyperthymesia, he came back and was all like “I took these photos of a place that seems like it was out of a fantasy painting and also recognized someone there who was on the missing persons list when I came back”. Like a boss.
In contrast, alas, ever since moving, my possessions have become overwhelmingly mundane enough you’d expect most of it to be in an 18th century post-colonial American home, the exception (if you could call her that), ironically, being my dog who is of a rare breed.
What’s the most wanderlusty thing you own, something that would be the absolute opposite of mundane if in your possession?
I own a Curta Type II calculator.
Holy shit! A real one?
Yup! SN 528128 Got it off eBay. Apparently the previous owner passed away and his daughter sold it. Paid $1300 for it. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever spent that much money on and I regret nothing.
It had some issues when I got it doing division. It tended to jam up turning in reverse. But I was able take it apart to get it working. One of the metal tabs wasn’t bent quite enough. Makes sense since these thing were all hand assembled and tuned.
I looked up the serial number on curtamania, and saw some checkins from various previous owners. It was pretty wild that someone even uploaded a photo. Not of a Curta calculator, but my Curta calculator.
That’s cool as fuck. I showed this to my fiancée but she didn’t seem to understand how cool this is.
I also have a much cheaper mechanical calculator, one of the ones you dial in the numbers with your pencil and only goes up to 9999 before the digits overflow. When I get up in the morning I’ll see if I can find it.
I just watched a video on this like an hour ago. Awesome stuff.