What do you do when the fad is over?

Remember the 1980s?

Yeah. I was alive then, and it just keeps coming up this week. Sorry about that. Take this for example:

The Sherlockian riff on that "Baby on Board" fad in back-window car signs that went around back then. You still see the odd one out there, from the person who just really, really thinks you're are going to decide the Trolley Problem in their favor based on the possibility that they have a baby in their vehicle. And if there was ever a human being out there who had that split-second choice whether or not to hit my car based on my claim to be Sherlockian, I've been playing the odds by not putting that thing in my cars. Ever.

So, it basically becomes one more museum piece in this personal museum of the weird whose primary visitor is me.

But the thought occurs that maybe I should find new uses for it, and actually get some mileage out of the thing. Like carrying it to meetings, and whenever I hear an idea I like, flip it face up and state, "Sherlockian on board with that idea!" Eventually, I could probably stop saying the words and just flip the sign, if I wasn't carted out of the meeting first for sheer wackiness. (Hmmm, I could meet with the U.S. prez . . . I hear he has some great tolerance for wacky this week.)

Or I could put it on a cord and go surfing! Sherlockian on surfboard! I mean, do you know any Sherlockian surfers out there? Any at all? A Sherlockian surfer is such a rarity that they should proudly wear a little sign like that.

Place it jauntily in my hatband to wear onto aeroplanes or ships, just to let fellow passengers know they could ask me Canonical queries during whatever travels we were about to share?

Find a friend, go to a local playground teeter-totter, and when little kids came up and demanded we get off, hold it up like a badge of authority and declare "Sherlockian On Board!" like that South African declared "Diplomatic immunity!" all through Lethal Weapon 2. Little kids wouldn't know that wasn't a thing, Sherlockians getting teeter-totter-hogging privileges, so that could work.

Or I could just go seriously serial-killer mad, start collecting actual Sherlockians on boards like butterflies, and pit the sign on the display. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through just to use a sign from the eighties, and it might eventually discourage visitors, so no to that one.

Eventually, I think any collector of Sherlockiana has to hit a point where they go, "WHY DO I HAVE ALL THIS STUFF?!?" And at that point, it might be time to re-purpose a few of those things in ways that don't involve serial killing. Or maybe just find a younger friend or friends who would be happy to put the thing in their personal museum until they reach a similar crisis.

Although, in my case, they probably aren't coming to visit after a few of the possibilities mentioned above. So the idea of keeping this little yellow sign defintely has a . . . .