“RE/COLLECT” by Kit Novotny - Daryle Lambert – What makes a collector?

Car Collection - Thanks to Flicker .com

I have been privileged many times in my life but none more than last night. I attended a solo performance of a play “RE/Collect” at the University of Chicago that was written and performed by Kit Novotny. You are asking why this was so important to me, right? Well, I will try to explain how it affected me and also served as a great lesson to my 10 year old son, Joshua.

It all started several months ago with a phone call from a wonderful young lady named Kit. She ask if it would be okay to interview Joshua and myself about being collectors. My first question of course was “How did you find us?” She explained that she had run across our website www.31corp.com and found it quite interesting.

We set a date for her to visit our home and anxiously waited for her visit. After spending several hours with the interview, Kit thanked us and said we would hear from her later. Kit had taken special time to interview Joshua. In fact, at one point he informed me I could be dismissed because she wanted to talk to him.

Little did I expect what was coming. “Do you remember me?” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “I am Kit who interviewed you and Joshua about collecting.” I assured her that I remembered and she informed me that she had produced a play from that interview and several others that she had accumulated. I thanked her for allowing Joshua and me to be a part of it and then she invited us to her first performance.

The date of the performance was last night and I have to admit I didn't really know what to expect, but as we arrived Kit greeted us and had our tickets reserved. The theater was packed and everyone seemed to be excited so we sat down and started talking to the people around us. The first people I started a conversation with were Kit’s parents who had traveled from Massachusetts for the performance by their daughter.

The program explained that the play was a re-enactment of the interviews that Kit had conducted over a year and she played the part of each interviewee. There were seventeen interviews but I was most interested in how she portrayed Joshua and myself. I was very interested to see this young lady take on the role of an old man and the next moment be a young boy but she did it amazingly well. Her play gave me a new found understanding of the thinking of collectors and I now realized that it is truly an individual thing and often has very little to do with the object but more about the memory.

This experience reinforced my belief that we at the 31 Club are serving a very honorable service by helping people reconnect to the favorite memories of their past. By doing that we are enhancing their lives in a good way and as you know in the world today we are in a battle for those good memories. If you are reading this and have not become part of the 31 Club I would encourage you to consider joining us as we continue to enhance our own lives while helping others.

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