A week ago last Wednesday I came across a colleague in need of comfort. She'd had her bag nicked the previous weekend, losing her Oyster card and boyfriend's iPod. She was clearly very upset and I tried to reach out to her but she flinched in a "No, its too raw, please don't be nice to me" kind of way. "At least no-one got hurt," I said, deferring to a comfortable platitude. She shrugged, as if the damage had been at least that bad. She was wearing black.
This Wednesday I saw the boyfriend who also bemoaned the loss of the aforementionned iPod. "I'd always been really careful with it. I've had friends go through three or four iPods over that time, but not me. It was one of the first models, I got it before they were so popular. It [significant pause] could have been a collector's item [gulp]."
Its horrible having your bag nicked - granted - but while I was genuinely sympathetic during my encounters with the bereft couple but afterwards I found myself getting more and more indignant. More than a week in bereavement over an MP3 player! Its easy when you're feeling a bit self-righteous to counter this suburban overeaction with genuine day to day tradegies you've seen and experienced - death and illness, relationship break downs, unhappiness, depression - but honestly, get over it. Only having your stuff robbed once in five years of London life seems like a pretty good record.
As for the holy grail of having a genuine "collector's item", give me a break. Consumerism transformed with a higher purpose. That said, I've got a rare red vinyl 7" of Get Ready by the band Ash that I would part with at the right price. Anyone?
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3 comments:
Interesting. I like the way your sympathy seemed to decline inversely in proportion to the (disproportionate) length of their grieving. Inanimate objects are strange. I can understand the annoyance of losing expensive items, and the stress of a 'robbery' (despite never having been robbed myself) but people do become curiously attached to items in an obsessive sentimental way regardless of worth. My mum must have given me hundreds of presents during the course of our shared lives - clothes, toiletries, notelets, newspaper cuttings, cuddly toys, cups, jewellry and much, much more - but the things I most treasure are more random... the socks she died in, a chocolate she asked me to save for her, a tiny weeny photo. On a separate matter, my brother's girlfriend unfortunately left her bag on a train last week. The bag contained her new clothes and birthday presents for my brother. I must admit to being really upset when I heard the news... I suprised myself by how upset I was... I think it was partly because she's having a hard time of it at the moment and it seemed a cruel thing to happen, partly because I thought of her sweetly buying presents for my brother, of the thought and care and love that goes into buying presents, and how a moment of forgetfulness or stress changes something potentially fun and good into a thing of sadness. We will one day look back on these things and smile.
I agree these "objects" are strangely gripping. I did the same as your brother's girlf once and lost a bag of presents, I was mortified. The things that I would be saddest if I lost would be accumulated bits n bobs - notes and letters from friends - although I rarely look at them, they're a record of life that its comforting to have.
Yes, I have a box of such titbits, including a letter that I wrote to Neil (I wrote it out sooooo many times in an attempt to get it right, and when I look at it now I cringe at how young, and keen, and tryingtosoundgrown-up I come across), and one of my first 'love letters', which read: "Sorre I wos not in town. I was chickin. You have big tits [editor's note: this is an interesting example of the increasing use of hyperbole in modern youth speak]." Alas, the myopic youth turned out to be otherwise inclined, sexually speaking, and we went our separate ways.
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