Too Special to Use

You received it as a gift--right?  And it's so beautiful and special that you want to keep it that way.  Or--you bought it on a whim and are saving it for a special occasion.  

And there it sits--on a shelf in your closet or in your desk drawer.


That is the story of this pen that was still tucked away, unused, in my mother's kitchen drawer many years after she died.

I had bought it for her sometime in the 1970s, when a $25 Cross pen was, for me at the time, a fairly hefty expense.  Of course, Mother appreciated it, recognizing it as something special.  So she labeled it and set it aside to keep it nice and new, using "ordinary pens" for her letters and grocery lists.


Recently, I came to recognize a similar behavior in myself.  When sending packs of photo prints to friends, I wanted to include just a short note.  My desk drawer seemed to offer the choice of a folded notecard (a bit too formal) or a piece of paper from one of those notepads that always come in donation requests (a bit too impersonal).  Looking further underneath, though, I noticed a set of post cards that I had bought years ago, just because I liked the whimsical artwork.  But, since when do I send postcards?  

What if, at the time when I'm no longer on this earth, these were still sitting in my desk, waiting for somebody to clean up?  Would I then be lucky enough for that somebody to appreciate the humor that I saw in them?  Or, more likely--would he/she say, "These are weird!  Why in the world did she keep them?" before tossing them out.

So, I wrote my note on these postcards and sent them along with the photos.  Would the recipients appreciate them?  I have no idea, but at least I gave them the chance.  That's two of them used!  Only a half-dozen to go.  Now, if you someday get a note from me, written on a postcard published in Germany, you'll understand why.

Here's one of them--from a set called "Birds in Shoes," published by Inkognito. In case you appreciate the whimsy and the colorful artwork and want to follow up, you can find them and other such humor by clicking on their website here.  This link will show you another "bird in shoes."  Click on the online picture to enlarge it.  

If, on that website, you go to the list on the left and click on the topmost subject "Postkarten" (postcards), you will see that the world is indeed a small place.  In the first postcard, the German man at his computer has a hard drive that crashed, and he is calling NSA for a backup from March through July!  The last card on that page, titled "Oh, Oh, Oh,"  needs no translation.

Even if you don't know any German, you can have fun exploring some of their hundreds of cards.


And now -- I'm going to go through a lot more of my stuff to see what I can put to use rather than let it gather dust until somebody else throws it away!