Stuff I've Lost

Last night, I had a mini meltdown of sorts. Luckily, the Captain slept through it. If he hadn't, here is what our conversation would've looked like:

Captain: What's the matter?
Me: I don't want to tell you.
Captain: (already getting cranky) Great, a guessing game. Are you in love with another man?
Me: Yes, but he lives in Hollywood, so it's a long-distance thing, and totally one-sided.
Captain: What's the matter?
Me: I think I'm sad about Michael Jackson.
Captain:(rolling over and going back to sleep) Oh, for the love of God...

And then I'd have heard about how I woke him up for nothing over breakfast this morning. So, all in all, it's best that I deal with these things while he sleeps through it.

I realized yesterday that my three remaining pieces of memorabilia may be lost.

Firstly, there's the glove. It was possibly the thing that got me hooked on crafting in the first place. It came in a kit. A white cotton glove and some silver glitter glue for me to decorate myself--brilliant! Technically, I have the components of this kit in my sewing room right now, so I could make another one, but that would just be lame.

Then there's the glove pendant. I got that for my 11th birthday, and it was awesome! A pendant representing a white glove, and it was all sparkly, like someone had gone over it with a layer of glittery nail polish. I wore it while listening to Off The Wall on my high-tech walkman, and then it lived in my jewellery box for a couple of decades, and I know I saw it recently, but now I can't find it.

And finally, my pin. I had one of those round buttons you put on your denim jacket or your backpack when you're a kid with a picture of Michael Jackson on it. I loved this because I think it was the best picture ever taken of him, and a perfect representation of him before the craziness took over. Everyone knows this picture. He's wearing a yellow sweater vest and a yellow bow tie and looking oh so shy as if he wants to ask me out on a date but isn't sure he should. And no, I was not reading a little too much into that picture.

I think this stuff just signifies a certain time in history for me. We'd just come to North America from England. It was summer, so there was no school and unusually, also no constant rain and dreariness. My dad had this great auto industry job and we were suddenly flush, and enjoying all the consumerism America had to offer. I was learning to speak with a mid-west accent and tasting rootbeer-flavoured lollypops for the first time. We ate at McDonald's at least twice a week, and we listened to Huey Lewis and the News on the radio, and Journey, and of course Michael Jackson. It was a time like no other.

Now here we are a couple of decades later, and all those jobs in Detroit that changed our lives are gone. People are struggling to make ends meet everywhere. And Michael Jackson, who became gaunt and white and so weird, is dead.

Maybe I thought we'd eventually get back to that carefree, fun time, and now I know we won't.

Didn't I just predict yesterday that Farrah would be totally overshadowed by Michael? And poor hard-working Ed McMahon is now playing third banana to a hairstyle and a guy who lived with a chimp.

That's it for me and celebrity death talk. I'm off to see if we have a rootbeer-flavoured lollypop around here someplace.