I only did a quick glance through, but it looks like you are treating your hash references as though they were actual hashes. Example:

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self = {};
    bless ($self, $class);    
    $self{'date'} = `date`;
    warn "In TEST->new, created object $self, with date $self{'date'}"
+;
    return $self;
}
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You set $self to be a reference to an anonymous hash, then set $self{'date'} to the result of the date system call. What perl does is create a new hash, %self, and fills its 'date' key with that result. Since all variables are globals by default, this %self (not to be confused with $self) will be the same for all methods that attempt to access it. Hence, all calls to the 'get' method of TEST will return the same value regardless of instance, since the method references the global hash %self, not the private instance variable $self.

So use $self->{'date'} instead of $self{'date'}, and all will be well. Also, make it a habit to 'use strict' at all times, as it will catch all sorts of bugs like this.