Walter needs a hobby and turns to collecting women to satisfy all of his needs.
*
The weatherman reported that it was going to be another long, hot summer. With no one to talk to and no one to go anywhere with, Walter remembered last summer, the first friendless summer without his mother. Isolated where he lived with the closest neighbor more than a mile away, his mother had been his only friend. He dreaded having to live through another lonely summer alone. He wished he had a girlfriend. Only, looking much like Deputy Barney Fife's twin, his chance of getting with a woman was slim to none.
Yet, Walter was a good man, a God fearing man, a Christian man, but a crazy man. He lived in the house that his mother left him, when she died last year. Wanting to share his life with a woman, he didn't like living alone, but what choice did he have? He was ready for a wife but what did it matter, the women in town thought Walter weird. When he looked in the mirror, who would blame them? He looked weird and definitely he acted weird. If Forrest Gump was a real person, he wouldn't say weird is what weird does. He'd say, weird is Walter.
Maybe if he had something to occupy his time, especially over the long, hot summer, his most difficult season to be alone, he wouldn't feel so lonely, but what? Maybe if he had the interest of a woman, he wouldn't seem so weird, look so weird, act so weird, and be so weird. In the way that Brad Pitt and George Clooney was his heroes, his wish was to be normal just like them. If he couldn't look like them, he could act like them. He could talk like them and walk like them, but that was as far as he got. Trying to talk and walk like Brad Pitt and George Clooney made him look and sound even weirder. He'd be better off if he just acted himself.
Unable to find anyone to love, he gives up on women after the end of every summer. This year, was different. With his mother gone, he had more motivation to find someone to have some summertime fun. With the cold weather coming, along with the amount of snow that they get where he lives in upstate New York, northwest of Buffalo, by the great lake, much like a squirrel, he gathers his provisions and hibernates in his home like a bear, until the spring thaw. This year, the first winter without his mother, if he was lonely living through the winter with just his mother in the house, he couldn't imagine how lonely he'd be living without her and living alone.
Giving up on women every year, if he couldn't find a woman to love him and to live with him, then he needed to find a hobby to pass his time, but what? He overheard Jimmy, his mechanic at the gas station, talking about his hobby. He collects diecast cars. From what he said about them, he has a lot of them. Only, not even owning a car, other than the old Oldsmobile that his mother left him, he didn't like cars, so much. Not very mechanical, his mother did most of the repairs they needed, because of their speed and power, he was afraid of automobiles. He knew how to drive, but he had no place to go and even if he did have a place to go, afraid to give the car some gas while driving it on the highway, he drove as slow as molasses. He was the only one in town who routinely got a ticket for driving too slow.
"I must have a couple hundred cars, all different scales from 1/64 to one, to a Pontiac Trans Am that's 1/8th scale. The Trans Am is my only plastic model. The rest are metal. I dunno, I just like collecting them," said Jimmy. "It's fun to look at them all lined up in their plastic display cases."
Not much of a car buff, Walter wasn't the die cast collectible car type either. Then, when he was in the sporting goods store buying a pump for his bicycle tire, he heard Ray talking to the sporting goods store owner about his extensive gun collection. Ray was a hunter, a real man's man, a manly man, a macho man, and a genuine he man. Maybe, he thought, if he collected guns, he'd be a real man, just like Ray. Only, just as he feared automobiles, he feared guns, too. They hurt his ears, even just when watching them shoot one another on television. He always turned down the sound when they showed the shooting scene.
"I have plenty of rifles and shotguns, but I just started collecting handguns and pistols. I have everything from a .22 caliber to a .45. Once in a while, I like taking a different gun out to the gun range and firing it."
Even though he tried to like them, even though he walked over to the display case to look at them, Walter hated guns. He never even held a gun. The thought of even firing a gun scared him to death. With his clumsiness, no doubt, he'd drop the gun and shoot himself. For sure, if he had a gun, as a safeguard from firing his gun accidentally, he'd be more like his counterpart, Deputy Barney Fife and keep his one bullet in his shirt pocket, instead of in his gun.
Still, after hearing Jimmy talk about his diecast car collection and Ray talk about his gun collection, he figured that having a hobby was his ticket to having some summertime fun, something he never had, even when his mother was alive. She never wanted to do anything or go anywhere. Who knows, maybe he'd kill two birds with one stone and find a nice woman who shared his hobby. That would be swell. With no lapses in conversation, they'd have plenty to talk about then.
Even Steve, his mailman, collected stuff. Whenever he drove by Steve's house, it was obvious that he collected lawn ornaments. At Christmas time, Steve had so many holiday lawn decorations that parents would drive their kids all the way over from the next county, just to see his manger, Santa Claus, and reindeer exhibit. He thought about collecting Christmas decorations, that is, until he thought about the electric bill. He could barely afford the bills that his mother left him with now. Unless they had something to do with him finding a hobby he'd enjoy and finding a woman to love, he didn't need to have any more expenses than he had already.
Walter didn't collect anything. With use it up and wear it out, and fix what's broken, before buying anything new, as his motto, nothing interested him enough for him to spend his hard earned money on things he didn't want and on things he didn't need. He didn't even know what to collect but he figured that if he collected something, in the way that Jimmy, Ray, and Steve collected things, having a hobby wouldn't make him feel as lonely. Only, not knowing what kind of hobby interested him, what was there for him to collect? Always feeling left out, it seemed that his friends were already collecting the good stuff.
Living way out in the boonies, his mother's house was just the way she had left it, but then, when he thought about it, he realized that even she collected stuff. She collected Hummels and thimbles. He forgot about those. He could continue her collection of Hummels and/or thimbles, but that didn't interest him, in the way that it, obviously, interested her. Now that even his mother collected things, maybe it was time that he collected something, too, but what?
He saw on television that some people collect twine, paperclips, antiques, baseball cards, even buttons. Walter thought long and hard about what he could possibly collect but, except for women, nothing interested him. He liked women a lot, but they didn't like him. The closest he ever came to a woman was his mother and his blowup doll, Gabby, named after an Italian woman, Gabriella, who appeared on a poster that his uncle had bought him, as a souvenir, from Italy. He really liked Gabby. She was beautiful and the poster of her hung on his bedroom wall for years.
Other than collecting women, he didn't know what else to collect. Laughing at the mere thought of it, certainly, he couldn't go around town collecting women. When they showed up missing, then what? Besides, how would he even get them to his house without someone seeing him? Collecting women would be wrong. Wouldn't it? He couldn't just snatch someone off the street for the sake of collecting them. That would just be too weird. Wouldn't it?
Yet, he liked the idea of collecting women and the thought of collecting women stuck with him. The more he thought about it and the more he dreamed about it, the more he liked it. Realistically though, how could he go about doing such a thing? How could he even think about doing such a thing? The idea of collecting women was ludicrous and only made him feel weirder than he was already. He filed away the idea on his back burner and only thought about it again, when he was sleeping and dreaming about having an entire collection of women.