Shiny Things

I have come to realize that humans are not unlike birdies in that we are drawn to and seem to like shiny things. We want to buy them up and take them to our nest, much like birds and other small animals do. When I was a child we adopted a baby squirrel who lived in my fathers oversized housecoat pocket and eventually moved to the basement rafters and the great outdoors. I recall my Mother was always missing shiny things, and I recall vividly how ‘Tinkers’ nest was laced with Xmas tinsel.

I make jewelry, and while it is not really metal or shiny in the typical sense, sometimes people flock to it. There are darker people out there who can walk by shiny things and go straight to art. But not all.

I did a show on the weekend and was next to a booth hosted by a very nice couple with lots of imported shiny things and bright plastic bobbles. The bobbles I speak of are little decorative thingy’s one sticks in the holes of the plastic and much loved CROC shoe. While I hate them, and have yet to figure out the attraction of wearing ill fitted ugly plastic shoes on a hot summer day, and if the world ended and the only shoe that was not destroyed were a CROC I would still not wear one, after this weekend I am resigned to say that if one were to choose between hand made artsy jewelry and cheesy crocs, and bright pegs, well the hand made loses.

People were actually knocking over my jewelry to get to these things, laying shoes on top of my things, laying across my table and systematically annoying the hell out of me all weekend long. But not all was lost. One nice looking couple with two lovely girls stopped in front of the dreaded shiny booth to see what all the fuss was about. The father said to one girl “look at the shoes hunny,” whereby she crinkled her nose and said “Daddy, those are CROCS.”

I wanted to hug her.