My life, objectified

Credit where it is due: I was inspired this week by a writing prompt from fellow writer and internet friend Kristi Keller: tell the world about five objects in your home and their significance.

Something about this idea spoke to me – namely, that it would spare me from having to come up with my own idea.

But the prompt raises its own interesting thoughts beyond my own writerly efficiency. Thoughts such as:

• How do I define myself by the objects I keep? 

• What deeper meanings might unveil themselves when I ponder my possessions? 

• Are purchases made in previous calendar years still tax-deductible today?

The answers aren’t important. What is important is that the prompt asks for photos of the chosen items, and photos fill the space all too often taken up by Missy asking me for image ideas for my pieces.

So! Without further written fluff, here are my five objects for you to please not psychoanalyze:

• Box: This first object is a cardboard box. It is labeled “PHOTOS” in handwriting that I think is mine. This box and its contents have been with me through several moves, dating back most likely to the first Obama administration. 

I have not opened it in that time. If anyone else has opened it, they have resealed it with an archivist’s care. This box would pass inspection on Antiques Roadshow. 

Does it contain photos as promised? No one knows! I am the sort of person to reuse a perfectly good cardboard box until it ceases to be either cardboard or a box. It’s likely that I already own the box that will someday hold my ashes. It could be this box. This box could be holding photos of someone else’s ashes right now, and I would not know. Maybe I will find out after moving again someday.

• Rock: I collected this rock on an unseasonably warm December day. That doesn’t narrow it down much, I know. We may have to start referring to these hot December days as “seasonable.” 

Anyway. This rock caught my eye, so I carried it around with me and brought it home and put it on my windowsill, along with all the other rocks that have caught my eye and hitched a ride home with me.

This rock might not look like anything special to you. But I assure you, it is older than you are. And it will be here long after you’re gone, and I’m gone, and humanity is evaporated by a spate of increasingly seasonable Decembers. We are but a blip to this rock. 

So you better think twice about how special it looks to you.

• Jar of peanut butter: On the one hand, this jar of peanut butter is indistinguishable from all the other jars of peanut butter mass-produced and distributed by the J. M. Smucker Co. and its subsidiaries and partners. 

On the other hand, this specific jar of peanut butter has saved untold lives. How many jars of peanut butter can claim that?

You see, when Zach gets hungry, he doesn’t always realize it right away. And when Zach doesn’t realize it right away, he’s liable to take someone’s head off, pop!, like they present no more challenge than a Lego pirate minifigure getting its yellow face swapped with a Lego spaceman minifigure. 

Except Zach would never do that with actual Lego minifigures. Pirate heads stay with the pirate bodies, and spaceman heads stay with the spacesuits. But when Zach doesn’t eat some of this peanut butter, human heads are not so carefully considered.

• Rainbow llama unicorn: Real men have stuffed animals. I mean, their dogs have stuffed animals. Real, manly dogs for real, manly men. Even if a significant reason behind purchasing the stuffed animal is to inject some color into the house, which I swear is not otherwise entirely the shades of brown and gray and once-white you see in these photographs that – remember – you agreed not to psychoanalyze.

• Salt lamp: See? I have colorful things of my own! Who says real men can’t do mood lighting. I am a big fan of ambiance that can also, in a real pinch, cure meats.

So there you have it! My home in five natural and not at all staged photographs. I hope you’ve learned, as I have, that a life cannot be defined by physical goods. Rather, we define our lives by the stories we tell, stories that justify ourselves and our hoarding strategies to strangers on the internet.