Mugs, Fuzz, and Tees Date Thursday, April 18, 2024 - 10:27 PM PST Topic Experiences I broke a mug today. It wasn’t just any mug, though. I had just finished making spaghetti at three a.m. in a coffee maker (we dorm students are innovative.) The mug was its serving dish. As I reached for the salt, I knocked the mug onto the floor, where it loudly became a mess of white porcelain and wet, half-cooked spaghetti. As I crouched down to inspect the unsalvageable spaghetti (dorm floor dust) I realized the mug was even less salvagable. written on its side were the words Robinson Memorial Hospital, 1990. My mother worked there when I was little. It’s funny how we assign sentimental value to simple things. When I was a kid, I placed value on my stuffed animals. I felt guilty if I played with one more than another; like I was a betrayer, like I was neglecting Spot the Giraffe because I paid unfair attention to Humpy the Camel. The thought of losing one was enough for me to exercise maternal care over them; each one had a name and I reassured them that I loved them all equally, when in my heart I knew that Magenta the Kangaroo had lost my interest. I wasn’t stupid; I knew they didn’t have brains and didn’t know the difference, but something about the little plastic eyes sewn to fuzzy little heads made me care about them. While I collected stuffed animals, my dad collected tee shirts. He has dozens of them from over the years, mostly from car club meetings. Once, either by divine inspiration or my mother’s prodding, he went through and sorted them all into boxes, separating the giveaways from the keepsakes. When he was done he had two boxes, one full of special tee shirts; too special to wear. The other box was dubbed junk. At the family’s convenience, the boxes would go to the secure cellar and to Goodwill, respectively, but until then the boxes would just sit around the house. Usually the prospect of houseguests is the only thing that prompts these things to get done. A few weeks after the sorting I found myself in need of a good work shirt. I was scheduled for a construction project in Costa Rica and all my shirts were decidedly not expendable, so my ever-resourceful mother pointed me in the direction of a box of old tee shirts. I found a sturdy one and packed it for my trip. It was a nice trip. Unfortunately, photographs bear strong resemblance to truth. The lividity of my father upon seeing his favorite Austin-Healey tee shirt on his now-not-so-favorite daughter was humbling to say the least. According to my mother he hadn’t been that mad in quite some time—that had been his special shirt. You don’t just cut the sleeves off special shirts, cover them in cement, and leave them in a poor section of Central America. How could this happen? How could we mix up the boxes? Couldn’t we tell those shirts were special? No, we couldn’t. We couldn’t tell because they weren’t our shirts. We didn’t know. My stuffed animals didn’t know I loved them and worried about them and tried to treat them equally. I didn’t even know the mug was special until I broke it, when I had a reason to pay attention to it. It’s not like we needed that mug; we have so many that half of them have actually made it to the cellar. So why did it matter? Why did a cheap mug, different from every other mug only by a half-ounce of green paint, make a difference? Why did I ever cherish piles and piles of synthetic fiber? Why was dad upset about a tee shirt he wasn’t going to see or appreciate or even wear? This stuff, this . . . junk . . . mattered because it was there. Because it existed. Because in our minds, it was something we could mother, worry about, seethe over. That mug was, to anyone else, just a mug. But as I laid this fourteen-year-old piece of junk in the trash can on top of cold coffee grounds, I felt like I was saying goodbye. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=732