Breaking up is hard to do (unless you have a granite floor)

[madbaker]

I broke a mug today. It slipped from my hand and broke on the floor.

The actual mug was pretty cheesy - it said things like "Let this be the day that you make things happen!" But it was a mug I was given back in my undergrad days, as a thank you for helping out at fencing tournaments. One of the two things I ever "won" as a fencer.

Oh well. At least I still have my tin candy tray.

Comments

The only thing I ever won for fencing...

[fionnbharro.livejournal.com]

... was a remark by the foreman that I 'drilled accurate holes' for the hinges.

Maybe I should call it 'building pasture gates', rather than 'fencing', huh?


But, to commiserate: I, too, broke a mug that was stupid-but-had-sentimental value a while back. And, yes, it's funny the way we get attached to dorky 'things'.

When I went off to college, the next-door lady gave me a coffee mug for my dorm room. I didn't drink coffee at the time, but she told me it was a 'good college mug' that her late son brought home from his school. He'd sit and have coffee with her and drink from that particular mug. She gave it to me because she thought it needed use (that, and I think she was shedding material things at the end of her time).

Although I was creeped-out by the morbidity factor, I kept it, and only started using it after she, herself, died. I liked her (in an old-lady sort of way), and was thoroughly annoyed that nobody at home told me she died and I only found out months later during break.

So, I started using it. I started drinking coffee because I felt I needed to show some sort of last respects to this dead neighbor lady, and I *swear* I thought about her each time I had a cup.

And then, in grad school, it broke.

I had it on the windowsill in my office, and the sliding window hinge slipped, and knocked the empty mug to the floor. I was really annoyed about the situation -- not about the mess, but because of the sentimental attachment I had to the damned thing. An attachment about which I wasn't even aware. It was all out-of-proportion to the situation of a simple dorky mug breaking.

So, yes, I think I understand.

Re: The only thing I ever won for fencing...

[otherwind.livejournal.com]

You know, your story reminds me that I also had a meaningful mug from college days that broke. madbaker may or may not know that shortly after we graduated, Scripps changed the college logo from the really cool, interesting 30's looking triangle sort of thing with a woman sewing seeds to a stupid soulless modern thingy with three arches. That mug, which I received at freshman orientation, was one of the last things I had with the original logo. I was so sad to lose it that I kept the pieces even though it will never be usable again.

[otherwind.livejournal.com]

I just went back and read your candy tin post and smiled. I like to think I may be the only one on your f-list who actually has fenced with you (back in the day). 'Course you could take me apart any time you liked.

So there's a funny addendum to the fencing in college nostalgia: After graduating, we spent a few years in Olympia, WA (at Evergreen) and then moved to Bellingham. There I met an acquaintance in the SCA whose grandfather was--you guessed it--professor Zold, quietly living out his retirement in Vancouver, B.C. Last I heard, they were having a really big deal party for his 90th birthday (I think--one of those high numbered birthdays). That was probably ten years ago.

Did I ever mention that Professor Zold was also my mother's fencing instructor when she was a student at Pomona in the last sixties? Marty and I still say "bamela" when one of us scores a proverbial hit. Good times!