STRANGER THAN FICTION: PACK RAT GENE DOESN'T SKIP A GENERATION

The Other Half's endless hoarding of completely worthless possessions fascinated me at first, but after nearly six years of marriage, it just ticks me off.

When we married, it was newspapers. Newspapers from Denver. Newspapers from Los Angeles. Newspapers from Philadelphia. Boxes and boxes of them, all carefully organized by date. They didn't contain articles about any particular subject. They weren't mementos of a lovely sojourn in those cities.

They were just newspapers.

"I like to just look at the different designs of them," he claimed.

Yeah, but for years and years? I mean, how long does it take to absorb the difference between the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times?

Then there were the magazines. They took up 8 cubic feet of closet space and weren't taken out for viewing even one time.

He had hundreds of miniature race cars in the original packaging. Plastic box after plastic box of them. Ended up those nice Rubbermaid boxes were worth more than the cars.

Of course, storage of his collections was complicated by the fact that we've lived in a string of apartments no larger than postage stamps. You couldn't walk past someone in the kitchen of our Fort Lauderdale apartment without getting sued for sexual harassment.

So I finally devised a way to make him get rid of the collections. Two moves ago, I issued an ultimatum.

"I am not breaking my back carrying that junk to one more residence," I said. "We'll each pack and move our own personal belongings."

My stuff was loaded up in about a half-hour. I went to the movies while Mr. Half struggled under the weight of a few hundred newspapers and magazines.

He threw most of them out.

By the time we got back to Cape Girardeau in September, he was pared down to just the bare minimum of worthless junk. Things he really couldn't live without, like his stuffed rabbit from kindergarten and his "Charleston Bluejays" pennant.

Unfortunately, our new place has plenty of storage. We've got a giant closet in the guest bedroom, another under the stairs, a pantry, a utility closet and a storage room off our patio.

Mr. Half absolutely salivated when he saw it. Unfortunately, he'd thrown out most of his worthless junk. There was only one thing he could do.

He went to his mother's house.

See, he inherited the pack rat gene from her. Don't ever mention throwing something out in front of my mother-in-law. She pales visibly and yells: "Don't throw it out! I've got plenty of storage at my place!"

For the past eight years, she has claimed she's saving things for a yard sale. Well, the jig is up.

Now Mr. Half is siphoning off some of her junk. He brought home six dusty boxes last month. He brought a seventh on Sunday. I gave him a pretty harsh frowning over that, but no results yet.

See, the pack rat gene doesn't run in my family. If anything, my mother throws away things that she should keep. She hates old family pictures, choosing to store photographs in shoeboxes and then pitching them after a few years. I had to save my baby book from her she considered trashing it around my 16th birthday. (It's only filled out through the "Baby's First Christmas" section and then abruptly ends. I was born Dec. 18.)

So the question becomes, what would happen if The Other Half and I had a child?

Frankly, I think we should be as careful when deciding about reproduction as any other genetically troubled family.

The world only has so much room.