Tag: requiem

Requiem: Spatula

O! Dollar Store Spatula! How perfect you were! This was a replacement spatula for a similar one I picked up in college, lo those many years ago. That one met a similar fate, and I loudly mourned its passing. This one showed up in my Christmas stocking a few weeks later, my mother having heard a lot of the trials of spatula-less life. Which are many. Trying to flip fried eggs, spatula-less? Very difficult.

I was amazed that the new one was exactly like the one that came before it. “Where ever did you manage to find it?” I asked, temporarily forgetting the standardized modern manufacturing and distribution process.

“I got it at the dollar store.” my mother replied, shaking me back into the present. Of course there is more than one basic plastic spatula.

This one met its end when I was banging it against the sink trying to remove collard greens. It just split in two. Adieu, good friend and trusty helper.

Requiem: flash drive

January of 2004 brought us a “weather event” that closed schools for four days. I was student teaching at the time, and so I had ample time at home. I put all my CDs on my computer and then, having nothing much more to do in my tiny studio apartment, I began to obsess that I “needed” a laptop. I made the mistake of asking Matt if he thought I should get one–he was trapped at his house, too, playing video games until his eyes turned red–and he thought I should. In retrospect, I knew I was asking the person who would tell me to go ahead and buy. Matt agrees with a good argument and doesn’t really weight the financial factor, which was significant, in my case. At that point, I was pretty poor due to a SNAFU with financial aid.

So the laptop was bought, used for five months and it did come in handy while student teaching. Then, as I grew increasingly worried about it getting stolen and also the fact I shouldn’t have bought it in the first place, I sold it at a loss on eBay. The result was that I essentially paid a little over $100.00 per month to use a laptop. Not the best deal, but not horrible, either.

I tell you all this, because at the same time I bought this jump drive. (Flash drive, thumb drive, cigar, it needs a standardized name.) 128 MB of storage and it cost $49.95. This was totally worth it, because I have used it for four years. Though now you can get multiple gigabytes of memory for less than the price I paid, this little guy was state of the art at the time and it worked for me.

Now, however, he is broken and I must bid him goodbye.

The opposite of requiem.

More than 10 years ago, I got this toaster oven for Christmas. It never worked right: it would burn the top quarter of your bread, somewhat toast the middle and not toast the bottom quarter at all. It was too complicated to return it and the toaster was not really broken so I couldn’t really justify throwing it out or getting a new one.

Sometime this fall I woke up to the fact that I’ve been making substandard toast for more than a decade. Overall in my life, a slice of badly made toast barely registers on the unpleasant scale, but when I thought of the thousands of pieces of toast I had consumed all thanks to this non-performing toaster, the “barely registers” added up to a minor injustice and I decided to stop the insanity. I requested a new toaster oven for my birthday and my mother and aunts banded together to get me an excellent toasting machine.

Goodbye toaster. I thank you for your years of service and I will overlook your deficiencies. I know that you were trying to do your best, but just didn’t have the ability to get the job done right. I wish you good luck in your next life at the Goodwill, but I won’t miss you at all.

Requiem for an ugly brown chair.

“…and I love these earrings, that nobody loves but me.” Debbie Hunt in Singles.

Debbie Hunt had her earrings, I had my chair. This ugly brown chair was incredibly comfortable. It was a fabulous place to curl up and read a book and when I put some sort of throw over it, you could barely even tell it was that industrial-never-ever-will-rip 1970s fabric.

I got this chair when I lived at 40 Hobart Lane in Amherst, Mass and carried it with me when I moved to South Boston, Somerville, and all the way across the country to Portland where it lived happily in three separate places. But now I seem to have entered the adult life stage of “matching furniture” and it was time for the chair to go.

No one on Craig’s List wanted to pay for it. The Community Warehouse didn’t want it. No one on Craig’s List wanted it for free, either. Last Saturday, I paid someone $15.00 to cart away my beloved chair. I think he was after the money more than the chair.

Requiem for a calculator

I’ve had this calculator since my junior year of high school. It was the third calculator my parents bought me, as its predecessors kept getting broken because books would fall on them in my locker. (Notice the clever use of passive voice there–I certainly had nothing to do with those books falling.) My mother told me it was the last calculator she would buy me. And it was. I used it from then until tonight when I accidentally dropped it. The solar panel broke and the calculator, she is no more. Farewell, friend. You served me through many a math problem.

Requiem for an apron.

I don’t normally steal things, but when I knew I was quitting Bread & Circus, Whole Foods Market, I did take home this apron. Though part of working at B&C was a low point in my life, another part of it was something I look back on with nostalgia. One of the better parts was the uniform. I liked wearing the chef coats and the crisp white aprons.
I cooked with this apron for years, but my whitening powers are weak and it quickly faded into a grubby gray, then got even dingier and I had to stop using it, for fear that no one would eat anything I made while wearing it. It sat in my closet for a few years because I didn’t want to just throw it away. Today I did, but not without taking a picture.

Requiem for a long sleeved t-shirt

Here’s another item that went to the great trash can….

Matt gave me this t-shirt shortly after we got together. For years, when someone asked me what McGregor was I told them that Matt got it when he did crew in college because the winning team would take the losing team’s shirts. But I just found out this week that I had completely fabricated that story and that his mother sent it to him when she was at Antioch College. Oh, well okay. So I was wrong about its origins.

For some reason, long sleeved shirts are not plentiful in my life which means that this one got worn a lot, September through June. Whenever the weather was slightly colder in the morning when I exercised, I put on this shirt. The advantage of working out outside in the morning is that no one sees your workout wear. So it didn’t matter when the oil stain appeared.
The other day I was putting it on for perhaps the thousandth time and my elbow ripped a big hole in the armpit. I wore it a few times after that, but the damage was done. I said a sad goodbye to my trusty t-shirt.

Requiem for a jacket

I get attached to things, especially clothing. Being attached means that I wear some things until they are falling apart. Then they are in too bad of shape to donate them to Goodwill. So I have to just throw them away, which seems a horrible thing to do after so many years of good service. There should be a ritual. Lacking one, I’ve started taking pictures of the items before I consign them to the great trash can.

This was my grandfather’s jacket. When I found it in my aunt’s closet it was missing the wool lining, but I wanted it anyway. I loved the contrasting lining and the green color. It was also perfect for my winter in the Pacific Northwest: it kept the rain and wind off of me, but was light enough I didn’t get too hot when walking from place to place. I wore it every day for years. I also had a Chalice Lighter pin on the collar for a time, but it disappeared somewhere along the way.
Now it is frayed at the cuffs and faded. So off it goes. Thank you, lovely jacket, for keeping me warm and dry.