The Thin Brown Line

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. Things have been a little crazy around here, the least of which was having the Passover seder at a new location. We normally had it every year at Bubby's apartment, but since she's moved out, we've been taking this opportunity to find as much useless junk lying around the house so we can sell them at her place next Saturday. As a result, there's been tons of packing and digging around old stashes, finding ancient knick-knacks. Some of these were items I hadn't seen in years. Others brought back old memories I had long since forgotten. Its the latter that I'm going to miss the most.














One particular ugly statue on a shelf had an interesting history behind it. My mother was traveling in France with a friend of hers, when a passing salesman popped up in front of her, and offered this African-looking statue for sale at a bargain price. Even though she declined, the salesman persisted, resorting to the foreign concept of haggling. The more my mother resisted, the further the salesman pushed his wares, until she finally accepted. While her friend was impressed with the outcome, she asked, "What are you going to do with that thing now?"













At first, my mother gave the statue to her friend, since she was there when it happened. But when they got back, her friend gave it back to Mom, since it was "hers". Since then, every time she and her friend met throughout the years, they would inevitably give the other the statue as a parting "gift", each one too polite to pass it up. This continued even when they were living in different provinces. It was the ultimate re-gifter. This practice only stopped when postage became too expensive to justify mailing it. My mother initially wanted to sell it, but after mentioning the story, decided it was worth another go, since her friend was going to be in the vicinity in a month or so.

Even so, I still had to suffer the mental heartbreak of giving away broken-down, worn-off pieces of trash that only had meaning to me, particularly a Transformers lunchbox where Ravage had long since worn off. After I recuperated, I was able to help organize the stuff into boxes and suitcases to be ferried over later. If this were a fair and just world, we would be able to neatly stack everything of inconsequence into neat little piles like on this Wednesday's Xkcd.


























Of course, because real life constantly interferes, the actual result looked something more like this: