Most men — at one time or another, especially as they move into their senior years — engage in a little exercise known as ‘taking stock of a life of collecting.’ It’s not that men are packrats more than that they are purely unable to let go of something to which a memory is attached. This is probably an endearing trait, most times, in men. Women may disagree, but men sure wouldn’t.

Consider the motorcycle or bike that the typical guy once owned a which has long ago receded into memory as it was either sold off or traded in for a new car or a jet ski or something. Certainly, the black helmet that came new with the bike stayed behind, for some reason. Most likely, because rubbing that helmet like a crystal ball brings back a lot of memories to the guy who owns it.

Perhaps there are memories attached to it and perhaps not, but this sort of occasional pack rat behavior is something that almost every man in the world — no matter his age — shares with every other man, even those living out in the most remote Himalayan mountain peaks. Those men probably have some sort of book or blanket that they’ll never be getting rid of, not in this millennium, at least.

One often sees this with men and the watches they have accumulated through their lives. A typical man will go through something like a digital sport watch every few years. He could take it to the store and have a new battery put in it but that’s too much effort. Instead, it goes into a drawer or box and another watch is bought.

Regardless, he held on to those watches for some reason or another, and when he — at some point in his long life — sits down to go over these possessions he most likely won’t even remember why he held onto them. But there they sit; and an equally old box and with an equally old idea that it might be nice to keep them just in case the world ran out of watches someday.

Now, not just any men’s sport watch — to use another example — occupies such pride of place in a shoebox or in a dresser drawer. But it still happens more often than not, and it still comes as no surprise to most any woman who ends up partnered with one of these guys and their occasional habit that involves becoming a little pack rat and storing things away.

Men and boys alike — at one point or another in their lives — become hoarders and collectors, which is just a nice way of saying that they turn into pack rats. Why a guy will sit there and collect his bellybutton lint, for instance, is a mindnumbing and frankly gross activity, specially to women, but people should just face it; men are pack rats at one point or another in their lives.