Just one more

Some folks vie to tie strands
on the world's largest balls of twine.
Make it onto the Guiness list.

Francis Johnson
of Darwin, Minnesota
spent four hours a day
for 29 years
adding strands.

The ball lives under a gazebo.
It weighs nine tons.
Darwin celebrates Twine Ball Day
every August.

Some guys prefer
balls made from
rubber bands.

The largest resides
in Lauderhill, Florida
and consists of 700,000
rubber bands.

Alexandria, Indiana
is home to the world's largest
paint ball, 20,000 coats
on what began as a baseball.

The Department of Homeland Security
has designated it as a
"distinguished heritage site"
which helped the state qualify
for a slice of the terror defense pie.

Some individuals go for more
esoteric collections:

A North Carolina dermatolgist
owns 675 back scratchers
from 71 different countries.

Carol V in Birmingham, UK
has 5,000 bars of soap.
A McDonald's franchise owner
has a collection of 75,000
bits of McDonald's memorabilia.

What to think about the Dutchman
who has 6,290 airplane barf bags?
or the Russian with 1,320 toothbrushes?

In America, we collect guns.
The top fourteen percent of gun owners,
seven point seven million people,
own a hundred and thirty million guns.

The average collection is seventeen.

Seventeen. A handy number.
One that fits just right
to personalize seventeen
assault rifles with a name:

Meadow, Jaimie, Alyssa, Scott,

Aaron, Luke, or Carmen.

Gina, Alex, Peter, Cara.

Alaina, Christopher, Helena, Joaquin.

Nicolas with a C not a K,

and Martin.