Men save the darnedest things

Every human has a hoarding instinct, which stems from a million years of harsh winters and, in my case, manifests itself in the accumulating of cardboard storage boxes.

My wife does not fully appreciate the arc of human history behind this.

Those same million years resulted in her own ability to hoard arcane facts, which take up much less room in the garage.

If you want to ship a broken printer back to the manufacturer, I am your man. If you want to know the name of that tart citrus fruit used predominantly in making marmalade, she can tell you all about the Seville orange.

When spring cleaning comes, you do not hear anybody nagging anybody else about "clearing out the junk" in her mind. The garage, though? Different story.

I save boxes of all sizes because you never know when you will need one. Actually, that is not true. You know exactly when you will need one—the day after you get rid of all your boxes.

Plus, the Boy Scout motto I once memorized, "Be prepared," is basically a license to hoard.

You might make the argument that saving useful things is not hoarding, and that proves that you are what scientists call a "man."  Women hoard too, but mostly just out of spite.

Please take this short quiz to determine your gender:

Do you save the connector cables to video cameras/TVs/VCRs you no longer own, in case they might fit some other device in the future?

Yes / No

Even though they no longer manufacture any device of any kind with those kinds of connectors, and never will again?

Yes / No

Do you feel that cans of motor oil, since they are not explicitly marked, have an implied expiration date of never?

Yes / No

Are you really ever going to get around to making that "classic" car in your garage "awesome" again, or even saleable as scrap?

Heck Yes / No

If you answered "Yes/Heck Yes" to any question above, you are a man, with an innate genetic ability to find value in items which other, better-smelling members of the species only see as worthless, space-hogging junk.

Revel in this ancient skill. It is the reason you are sitting there reading this and a mammoth isn't.

You may look at my garage and see 279 nested boxes sorted by shade of tan, but I see something entirely different.

I see victory.

. . .