SS: This May Explain Some of My Quirks

My mother and father have two main hobbies each. My mother is a doll collector and my father loves tinkering with antique phone gear. I grew up in a house filled with 100-plus phones, most of which operated through a 40s-era switchboard my father purchased from a funeral home when I was 12 years old. My mother, for her part, had many more dolls than me when I was a kid. I think that may be why I have no maternal instinct, but that is another story. Recently, she's really stepped it up -- acquiring around 25 in the past year alone.

I suppose it was only a matter of time for my parents' twin obsessions to intertwine, and look! Here we have it. Yes. My father sent me this picture this morning. It is a picture of a doll on a switchboard. He tagged it, "In these troubled times, I need all the help I can get!"