The Blue Stone Retrospection

I hate jewelry.

I’ve always hated jewelry. Ever since I was a child watching my mother’s six sisters haggling around the dining room table on which was a pile of worthless garish bling shortly after she died. They sparred, connived and bargained over every nauseating adornment as if their very lives depended upon which ugly piece each could cajole from the others. And each ornament seemed so revered, as if each indefensible amulet would make its owner prettier, brighter, wiser, appealing, magnetic. Each hideous bauble would, no doubt, earn the prospective owner the love of an admiring suitor for several lifetimes. It was nauseating. That started it, my disdain for jewelry. Good grief. The stuff was beyond awful.

And, what a waste of money each ornament is these days. What will a bucket full of turquoise rocks get you? You can’t depend upon any appreciation in value – most of the time this costume stuff depreciates to nothing in no time flat. Every time I see a woman waltzing by loaded up with bling, I say to myself, “Lord, please save me from that one.” If I ever had the misfortune to have a relationship with one of them, I can see myself living a dismal life beholden to her undying attachment to these diminishing treasures.

Really, who would rather store stones than money? Who would rather hoard intrinsically worthless metalized rocks than something of intrinsic value (like, property, buildings, or, horrors, cash)?” These people would be better off buying barrels of oil!

But then, one day I was confronted by one of my friends who, upon listening to me rant about my disdain for jewelry, ventured, “So Lloyd, what makes you happy? What possessions give you joy in life?”

Well, I did think about it for a while. And I answered, somewhat sheepishly, postulating what was forthcoming, “Books. My books. Oh, and my model aircraft. And, I guess, my couple of antique cars (if I ever get them refurbished).  My collection of photographs, many of them now fifty years old. And, I suppose, my dogs.”

“So, how much would all those things be worth if you sold them tomorrow?”

Well,” stroking by beard, “Probably not much. Probably near nothing.”

“You heard it first here, Lloyd. Better step down off that high horse of yours.”

Lloyd Rain