The other 18 months were in small cities: Cuautla, Morelos - Lagos de Moreno, Guanajuato - Leon, Guanajuato - Guanajuato, Guanajuato (home of Las Momias!) - Silao, Guanajuato. Wow, I hadn't realized that so much of my Mission was spent in Guanajuato!
So here's where this all fits in to the here and now... while noodling around on Google, I found a fairly decent photo of my first car:
Yeah, that's right, eat your hearts out, a 1956 Studebaker Skyhawk. This car looms large in the mythology that is the story of my life, as seen on Starz...
Which got me thinking about how Americans are big on icons, on objects that we possessed or worked with that we feel helped define us or make us what we were or are. Well, at least men are this way. But I have to suppose that women have some fondness for the memory of their first Wonder Bra.
Poor people in the interior of Mexico, in the 60's, didn't have much in the way of consumer icons. So, I asked myself, what did they do about icons? But then I remembered all the religious iconography running rampant in Mexico, at least back then. Were religious icons their personal icons? Who needs a car or an iPhone or some other accoutrement of consumerism when you have the Virgin Mary or a Saint around your neck?
I think I've answered my own questions. Humans can be very iconic, we enjoy possessing totems, props, supports and charms; find me a person who doesn't and I'll show you a newborn. It's money and/or position that dictate our selections in this regard. Some of my current defining icons are, in no particular order of importance:
1 my crotchless golf hat
2 my laptop
3 my condom carrier
4 my wind powered roller blades
5 my wind powered dark brown underwear
6 the sun
7 a Dr. Pepper can I watched Bishop Fulton J. Sheen drink from
8 my Blackberry
9 a Y-chromosome I got on Ebay reported to belong to Ghensis Khan
What are some of your icons?
6 comments:
-the chess set Screech used to beat the Russian kid in that episode of "Saved by the Bell"
- A bunch of juggling sticks to beat people who think juggling sticks are cool
- A remote control to a TV I sold 15 years ago
- a badly damaged sense of rhythm
The book "The Secret" that remains one since I purchased it six months ago.
A bottle of pink fitness water
My sad and torn up running shoes from years ago.
I just can't part with them.
beyond books, i don't really like to collect stuff. tossing useless crap out makes me happy.
my guy likes to collect stuff and i like to toss it out when he isn't looking. i love it when he goes out of town on business, i usually call the salvation army to visit. the trick is to get rid of it a little at a time so that by the time he's figured out that it's missing, it's too late for him to figure out where it went and go get it back.
i justify this because his mother is one of thsoe sick collector people you see on TV. There's a narry pathway through her house for people to walk. i'm scared of brushing up against a pile and causing stacks of crap to fall over like a giant domino game and take us all out and leading to me havin to chew my own foot off to get out of there to safety.
we don't visit them often.
Bert, re your comment at my blog about my sister being a reality TV show waiting to happen, Binx once told me to write a book about my white trash family and go on Oprah. i don't think she's ready for my Kinfolk....
Jilly
.....so let me get this right...you can get a hat WITH a crotch in? Where do I sign up for this?
AWESOME car Mr. B. They don't make cars with any personality anymore, I love seeing old relics...I mean vintage cars, like those. And I'm beyond jealous of your two years in Mayhico because I would love to go to Mexico (only not to one of those spring break nasty places)
Why is M.C. called De-Eff-eh?
My first car was supposed to be a Studebaker, too (I forget the model--it was one of the big ones that had the front end that looked like a shark). It belonged to the camp ranger at the summer camp I worked at. I made a deal with him for it during the summer when I was 15 that I would buy it when I returned the next year (he'd been trying to sell it for years). When I came back the next summer, it turned out he had sold it to someone over the winter.
My heart is still broken. I've yet to see a cooler car than the one I thought I was going to own.
My (at least) fifty extra golf clubs in the extra bedroom in our house that my wife keeps threatening to beat me with if I don't do anything with them soon.
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