ali: a brief history of time.

my mother has a two hundred year-old grandfather clock. it belonged to her great-great-grandfather, and, therefore, it is, both literally and in name, a grandfather clock. it is in our kitchen. the kitchen, mind you, is literally steps away from the family room. the clock is basically ticking in my ear every time i sit anywhere in or around the kitchen or family room. it is probably the most annoying thing ever.

thing is, my mom freaking loves it. like loves it loves it. it's kind of bizarre, really. according to her, her siblings don't care about anything that belonged to their family so it falls to her delicate shoulders to pick up the slack. tonight my mother decided that i needed a lesson in learning how to operate a piece of two hundred year-old machinery. it had stopped ticking, and so she asked me how to start it again. my response? "i don't know, close the little door?"

needless to say, this was incorrect, leading to a loooong lecture about family heirlooms and what will happen to them. if you people had any idea how much freaking china that "belonged to my grandmother" is in my house, you would fall down dead. when i told my dear mother that i would sell it on ebay (in jest, of course), she simply put her head in her hands.

obviously, i wasn't joking. i'm not a collector. personally, i think having things that belonged to dead people is kind of weird. my mother offered me my grandmother's engagement ring for if ever i get married, and i respectfully declined. also, i am not one to subscribe to the hoarding mentality, which is what collecting something boils down to. i believe in pragmatism, only owning and keeping things you have a use for. it's silly to have an entire set of plates and silverware you use twice a year.

maybe i'm young, maybe i'm too immature to understand the desire to own things that belonged to the generation before. (also why i do not shop in real vintage stores - just the fake ones.) who knows. but for my mother's sake, let's hope that i grow to love that goddamn grandfather clock just as much as she does.