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What is it about men and the stuff they never get rid of? Truly, if the only difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys perhaps a subset of that little saying should be that another difference between men and boys is the amount of stuff that men accumulate right from the time they were boys. Truly, the things they refuse to get rid of can boggle the mind.

For example, consider a ski helmet. It may be that this harmless little helmet — sitting all alone in the corner gathering dust and threatening nobody, no person or country, even — was obtained during freshman year of college. Never mind that that freshman year was back when Jimmy Carter was busily running for president, it’s over in that corner nonetheless and isn’t going anywhere.

Most likely, the helmet will turn up in a museum collection on some off-world planet after we finally figure out that hyperdrive or warp drive thingy that all the science fiction movies tell us is just around the corner. It’ll probably be just as dusty and unused then as it is today and as it was over 30 years ago, but it’s a way for man to connect with his past, most would say.

Another fine example of things men never get rid of is the typical black sport watch. This particular item most likely broke down when Bill Clinton was running for president back in 1992 and there’s no hope of getting it fixed. But the memories attached to the watch somehow require that the watch itself be present in order to send out all those positive vibes. At least, that’s what most men believe.

Usually, women who have experience with boys and men understand that this sort of pack rat behavior has some type of visceral significance to most men. Perhaps it’s because men have something in their DNA that almost makes it impossible for them to throw away an object that most women wouldn’t even consider keeping in the same county, let alone household.

Men seem to need these physical objects far more than many women do. Consider a man who grew up as a boy that played a lot of sandlot ball. This man has a cracked black helmet upon his mantle that is almost the equivalent of the Purple Heart medal. The ball hit it one day and didn’t hit him in the head, which means a lot to him, one might suppose, though it means nothing to anybody else.

All of the ways in which men collect stuff and then refuse to ever let it go just helps to highlight why they truly are our cultural documentarians. Chances are, in 10,000 years, anthropologists and archaeologists will only need to look at one man’s basement to learn everything they ever wanted to know about men and and their love of stuff.