I collect Coffee Cups. I’m fascinated by interesting cups and I have cups to remember things.
I come by it honestly. I remember the den back home where I grew up. Lining all of the book shelves (and there were many book shelves, heavy with books) were mugs and cups. It was daddy’s den and they were daddy’s cups. The ones I remember most clearly were the mugs that had faces. They were formed in the image of… maybe kings… maybe playing card face cards… They were faces. The cups were all interesting. I never understood why the cups were there. I loved looking at them.
Growing up, I never really thought much about thinking about them. I never though much about coffee cups at all. They just were. They were to drink out of. They were to wash and put away. That’s it.
I’m not sure when, over time, cups came to be a “thing” with me. It just sort of evolved into a thing and suddenly I had more than your average number of coffee cups.
Knowing that I have more than “normal people” didn’t seem (still doesn’t seem) to matter much. I continued to accumulate cups.
I have cups from places we have visited. On my desk at home right now is one from Disney MGM (back when it was MGM and not Hollywood Studios) from the Osborne Spectacle of Lights; it is holding change. One I bought at the second hand store that has Figment on it painting Walt Disney World Epcot Center holds dregs of coffee. One from Scarborough Faire in Waxhachie TX that has a unicorn on it is there just because it is an interesting shape and because we go to that Ren Fest almost every year…. it is hand made and in my head the handle is on the wrong side, because I’m right handed and when I sit it on my desk and try to use it for coffee, the picture faces away from me if the handle is where I like to use it.
I have cups that people have given me. I have my Auntie cup sitting on my desk at work where it is used every day. I have my Starbucks cup on my dresser with crochet hooks in it. I have my snowman on my dresser with push pins in it. I look at them (touch them) and smile remembering who gave them to me and why.
I have cups that I bought just because they interest me. I’m bug lady. I have one with butterflies on it and one with ladybugs on it. They are goofy but they make me smile. Or because they bring back memories from my childhood. They aren’t “cups” exactly, but glasses… I bought a set of aluminum glasses in gaudy colors that remind me of when I was a kid at Grandma’s house. I see them… touch them… I blink… and I’m reaching HIGH into the cupboard in the kitchen up at the farm. I’m smelling the cistern water, seeing the dirty screen in the door with the crank out pieces of glass and the rubber bands hanging around the door knob.
A Figment Of Fitness 