Goodbye My Friend

Confession, I get really really really attached to inanimate objects.

Exhibit A, my flute. My flute has a name, and I have a tendency to call him by name on regular occasion. Which leads to awkward moments when someone then says, "I didn't know you had a boyfriend" and I have to explain that I was referring to my flute... and then they get this dubious look on their face... that same look you'd probably see if you look in the mirror right... NOW... see that look of concerned speculation. Yeah. I get very very anxious when I don't know exactly where my flute is, and I don't like other people who don't play flute coming too close to him.

Exhibit B, my childhood friend, Suzie, the trusty doll that followed me EVERYWHERE. Not joking, she had a nightgown with a drawstring at the bottom and I used to pull the drawstring tight and drag her behind me everywhere we went. (This lead to much speculation about my future parenting abilities, have no fear, I now realize dragging a kid by the feet isn't such a brilliant idea, usually.) As far as I was concerned Suzie was real, leading to an outburst in the airport when I refused to put her through the x-ray scanner because it might hurt her. Traumatizing. Not just for me either, apparently, because next summer Suzie was conveniently "forgotten". I've long suspected foul play or sabotage, but the guilty conscience has yet to get to my parents. I do remember telling Mom to call the neighbors and tell them to feed Suzie. One month later we returned home and she was okay, after I nursed her back to health for a few days.

As I've gotten older some of the objects I've attached myself to have become more and more trivial (minus my flute). College hasn't helped. I have taken the duct tape oath, and believe firmly that anything can be fixed by duct tape. My alarm clock "fell" off the shelf one morning and broke in half, but the clock still showed the correct time, so what did I do? Tape it back together of course. So now almost two years later it works fine, it is just covered in duct tape. This minor obsession isn't my fault though, sometime go visit my mom and watch her cut cheese... the knife is not the knife it used to be... but it still works, and really really well at that. (Mom, if you ever want a new knife, my offer still holds, I'd be happy to take the old one off your hands.)

Upon my return from France I realized that one of my favorite inanimate objects was gone. It's a cup. Yes, a cup. My favorite cup. It always held the perfect amount of water or juice or milk or whatever I wanted. This cup had been mine since I was nine or ten years old. It was an Easter gift from the Easter Bunny. I used it faithfully until college. When I returned home for Christmas Dad told me to take the cup back with me because no one else would use it because it was mine. (Sadly this mindset only held for my cup, since my room, my bed, and anything else I loved was taken by the younger generation *sob*) So, away to college my cup came. It was so convenient, roommates very quickly realized that cup was mine and I never had to worry about grabbing the wrong one (who can mistake a bright pink Minnie Mouse cup?) About two weeks before I left I noticed something was amiss, and realized that after over ten years of faithful use the cup had started to leak. But, I couldn't throw it away, perhaps duct tape would fix it. Yes, duct tape would do the trick. Apparently though, in my absence it was thrown away, which is probably a good thing, because I never could have... and would have subjected the poor cup to tons of duct tape... and then my water would have tasted like duct tape... and I would have thrown the cup away on a bad note, and after taste... so who ever pitched it did me a favor.

Farewell old friend. I'll miss you.