H204ME

I just finished moving and I am shocked to say that I own over 100 cups.  Not just cups, but glasses.  Mugs.  Tumblers.  Christmas sets.  Garage sale treasures from the 70’s – wacky gold-rimmed and peacock feathered etched glass – and my coveted Tom and Jerry’s egg nog set from the 50’s.  Now I’m not a family of ten, or five, or even two.  I am just me.  And while I like to stay hydrated for sure, there is no way I drink out of more than my three favorites.  My pink mug I bought for five bucks after a great, memorable meal with my dad, a plastic out-door tumbler set my mom bought off the bargain rack at Target (you can drop them and they don’t break!), and an old wine glass when I want to make my Trader Joe’s cherry juice feel “fancy”.

I started thinking about this “cup” phenomenon, looking for additional meaning.  Why am I drawn to them?  Thinking about this while unpacking (I had a lot of time to think, putting them all away!) I remembered something else.  When I was six or seven, my friend Susie Carvalho had me over to her house after school.  Her mom made us dinner and poured us all a tall glass of Kool-Aid (OH YEAAAAAH!).  Before we ate,  I kid you not, I had drank the entire glass before she finished serving up our food.  And then she refilled my glass.  I drank the entire thing in less than two minutes.  I remembered stopping to look, noticing that I was the only one who had more that a few sips.  I wondered if there was something wrong with me.  Why was I so thirsty?

When I was in college, I drank an entire gallon of water a day, easily.  I was also fairly athletic and training daily, so I chalked it up to my required water intake.  If you take me out to breakfast or dinner, you can watch me unconsciously consume 4-5 glasses in thirty minutes (I do like to be taken out to breakfast or dinner, so please call if you’d like to check out this amazing phenomenon). And I can tell you that I am not thirsty.  But if you put water in front of me, I will inhale it.

I’m not actually thirsty (I don’t go looking for fluid, but if it’s there, I will take all of it in) yet am strangely drawn to fluid.   I spent years studying the physics of flow – electricity, blood, and lymph.  I was a competitive swimmer.  If there is a pool around, I have to be in it for hours at a time.  I need to live by a large body of water, or I feel trapped. Oh, and I’m a Pices.

So, back to the cups.  I never knew I had so many cups – I am not a conscious collector.  Why am I drawn to them?  I can tell you with one hundred percent confidence that it is not due to the fact that I like to do dishes!  There is no conventional explanation for WHY, but there may be a very simple “Occam’s Razor”-like explanation.  Anyone?  Or, if you become aware of a similar phenomenon with yourself – being drawn to a certain substance or item for seemingly “unexplainable reasons”, let me know.  Think of it as data collection.  And data collection makes one thirsty…right?  Or is that just me..?