We Can’t Get Enough of Hoarders
Who are the latest dysfunctional personalities to become TV anti-stars?
Hoaders has been accumulating fans since 2007. Hoarders: Buried Alive debuted this year. Sometimes, the hoarder is not so lucky. A four-month search for a missing Las Vegas woman ended recently when her husband accidentally uncovered his wife buried, but not alive, in their floor-to-ceiling junk-filled abode. Police had scoured the nearby desert with infrared detection and searched the house with specially trained dogs, but found nothing. Too many competing smells apparently confused the canines.
Not only did Billie-Jean James refuse to discard anything, she kept on buying, visiting thrift stores every day and adding to the mountain. How should we characterize the husband? Tolerant? Enabling? In denial? A co-conspirator? All the above?
An elderly couple in Chicago was luckier. A neighbor who hadn’t spotted them for three weeks called for help. Thelma disappeared into a pile of household debris. When husband Jessie tried to rescue her, he was buried as well. “Firemen put HAZMAT suits on to enter and upon doing so discovered two individuals still alive,” a police spokesman reported. The neighbor described the couple as “skeletons,” but at least they were walking skeletons.
There’s a public fascination with hoarders. In one sense, it’s simple human nature to be drawn to disasters, like rubbernecking a traffic accident. On a deeper level, it probably gives us some convoluted satisfaction: as difficult and unmanageable as our own lives may be, here is someone far worse off.
Unfortunately, hoarders give “collectors” a bad name. These are people who have controlled and honed the dysfunction. Unlike pure hoarders, collectors cheerfully admit to a disease. Homes may become so cluttered there’s barely room to walk, but no need for “intervention” and dump trucks. Collectors exhibit a method to their madness and an organization to the chaos.
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