24 years ago

[carbonel]

Twenty-four years ago, in 1987, I got my first computer. It was an IBM clone from one of the many no-name computer computer companies advertising in some computer magazine. dd_b recommended the company, and I ordered it via phone or snailmail mail order: I don't remember which. It wasn't ordered via e-mail, because that wasn't an option then. I paid slightly over $1,000 for it, which included an amber-on-black monitor and a 30-meg hard drive. The default was 20 meg, and I paid the extra $100 for the larger hard drive.

Shortly after it arrived, pameladean and dd_b gave me a mug as a computer-warming present. It was a black mug that held 12 ounces comfortably, and on it, it said "Is MS-DOS a feminist??" The double question marks seemed a bit excessive, we agreed, but the sentiment was amusing. And it was the perfect size to hold a goodly amount of coffee but still fit on the coffee warmer that sits next to the computer (and which is almost as old). It has been my default coffee mug pretty much since I started working at home, in 1996.

Today, I broke the mug. I just knocked it off the kitchen counter when I was doing something else.

I have plenty of other mugs. In fact, I had to do triage on the mug situation when I moved into this house, because half of a cabinet devoted to mugs was quite enough. But I don't have another mug of just that size, or with those associations.

This, I suppose, is what it means to be attached to things. Or, at least, to the right thing.

Do you have some trivial thing that you're unreasonably attached to because it just works the way it's supposed to?

Comments

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

There was a bowl that an artist friend of mine gave to me some years ago. It was heavy eathenware, and glazed in the colors of the Lake Superior shore. It was just lovely.

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

Countless things have deep meaning for me my house is a family museum of such things big and small but I try hard to remind myself it's just stuff and neither it nor I will last forever. Still makes me sad when something is lost of destroyed and I worry about it pretty regularly.

[aedifica]

Yes. I can't think of what it is, off the top of my head, but the feeling is so familiar I'm certain I do.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Our whole style of living in our old house, which we did right, felt like that. Developing new style here has been a nice enough experience, but it also has been stressful as we gave up a lot of old happy habits, and we stressed to get the new place as much like the old place in our habits and routines as could be done.

To the extent that we succeeded in doing this, we have liked our house all the more.

The more story one attaches to an object, the more one values it. And the less frequently it is likely to appear on the collector's market. Collectors can be said to assign value in other ways than retaining story to object, although (mostly) highly valuable objects will pretty much always have story attached to them. Scarcity influences that, of course.

All that is to say, sorry about your mug. Google doesn't seem to know about getting you another one.

K.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, lordy, yes, mugs are hard. I favor giant ones but not too heavy a clay, and that gets really difficult to find sometimes. We have resorted to making requests of potter friends.

Also I still mourn my first fountain pen. No other pen has been my pen that way.

[catalenamara.livejournal.com]

>>>"Is MS-DOS a feminist??"

LOLOL!

I got my first PC ihn 1985, and it didn't even have a hard drive. The monitor, at least, was green on black which I liked better than amber on black.

It remained in service until 1998. I gave it to a friend in 1989 and she used it as a basic word processor. It would probably have kept on going except the keyboard cord dried up and broke apart.

>>>Do you have some trivial thing that you're unreasonably attached to because it just works the way it's supposed to?

I tend to get very attached to *anything* that woeks the way it's supposed to....

Sorry for your loss

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

Similar story of woe involving a coffee mug. I got it at a coffee festival at Calhoun Square some many years back and it was my perfect shape and size and always reminded me of my best friend. The day it died I was heartbroken. I now make do with other mugs but none are quite my mug.

[kaffy_r]

I read this, and my mind immediately went to a couple of coffee mugs of my own, particularly one with a gorgeous illustration from "Dinotopia" on it Dinotopia was one of the home's favorite books when FB was a youngling, and I loved it just as much as he did. I'd only had the mug a short time, perhaps a year, when it broke, but cried. It was beautiful and was something I shared with my kid, and that may have been the reason.

As others have said, we grow attached to things because of the stories they tell for us, and the way they connect us to those stories. We feel more a part of the story when we have that material connection and I think, when the touchstone is gone, it's as if we've lost a little part of our own story.

Which is why it's probably not good to get too attached to things - and why it's very difficult not to get attached to them.

[tlunquist.livejournal.com]

I certainly have a few things I would be devastated to lose. I am blessed in that none of them are breakable (at least, not that I can think of at the moment).

kaffyr summed it up nicely. The thing becomes a prop in the movie of your life, and it feels odd and wrong when the prop is no longer in the scene.

So yeah, it's just a thing, and things are transient, and all that. And I offer my sincerest condolences on the loss, because you lost something that matters to you. I wish you the best of luck in finding a replacement that will be perfect in a different way, because nothing will, or really even should, be perfect in the same way.