Ring around the rosy

I just cleaned out my jewelry drawer. Of course there is a lot of talk about American acquisition of THINGS. The hip way of thinking about our society's downfall is that we are going to eventually going to be destroyed not by nuclear war or bad politics or ozone depletion or overdependence on foreign oil or... but rather by our own compulsions, obsessions, passions, and so on. When I clean out my drawers, I start to believe in that. (Honestly, I believe in that other times as well. However.)

Case in point: Did you know that I own no less than 17 rings? These are clearly not diamond rings or anything, but rather a bunch of random silver rings, collected over time and never worn. I have a few which I actually like, but since I hate my hands/fingers (they taper funny) I can't really wear them too often and so when I take them off once I forget they existed. During my hippie-pagan days in high school I collected a ton of rings with Celtic patterns and designs and I love those, too - I used to wear them all at once as though I drew witchy power from them. However none of them fit quite right, so they aggravate the funny tapering powers of my fingers more than they empower my fashion. My aunt handed a few rings down, some of which are pretty ridiculous numbers including one which actually is diamond - it has little diamond chips and two elephants and I would wear it every day except it's abnormally small. I have a class ring from high school, which I feel ashamed of. And the only ring I've worn at all in the past year (except the elephant one wishfully around my room) is a replica of a ring found on the original site of the Globe Theater, which my dad bought me when we were in London.

Ow. I just got the elephant ring stuck on my finger.

No, seriously.

Ok, it's off. I shouldn't play while blogging.

The funny part about all of this is that all this collecting is done for the sake of preservation. I save these things so I can use them later when all of a sudden I am wearing Celtic rings again, or when my kids will want them for costumes or for when they need to wear Celtic rings or when class rings become retro again (although I think they have actually always been retro). I hope I give birth to small children who can wear the elephant ring without fear of losing all blood in the tips of their fingers. And ironically my preservation instinct is the same thing that leads me to pile up so much useless, outdated, nostalgic crap that is one day going to suffocate me, tarnished silver and all.

Humans are weird.