JEWELRY
I love jewelry. I especially adore chunky gold jewelry, the kind that looks like it came from a temple. It doesn’t bother me if folks think wearing bracelets up to my elbows and a ton of necklaces is ostentatious. The Queen of Egypt, ol’ Cleo, pulled it off. She had nothin’ on me.
There’s cheap jewelry and expensive jewelry. Don’t believe anyone who says no one can tell the difference. Just a glance is all I need to determine if a set of pearls came from a mollusk or a plastic mold. And I don’t need a jeweler’s glass to spot a fake diamond. I just need to get close enough to bite it.
People started wearing jewelry at least 500,000 years ago. That is, if you consider bones worn through the nose or other body parts to be jewelry. Jewelry is what separates mankind from the beasts. Adornment is strictly a human affair.
Ever see a lion with earrings? How about a hippo with a tongue stud? There are birds that make gifts of bright rocks to their mates. But unless it has a hole in it and can be strung around the neck, no way it counts.
Expensive jewelry is an investment and confers value to its wearer. That’s why it’s a favorite gift for men to give to women they want to impress. However, some women despise such gifts. They view it as a crude attempt to buy their affections. Well, come on over this way, big boy. I’m for sale.
As a young kid, whenever we went to a store, I pestered Mommy to give me 5 cents. This was so I could buy a trinket from the machines in the lobby. The machines were the old fashioned, gum-ball variety.
They dispensed trinkets and toys as well as gum. It was the luck of the draw as to whether I got plastic jewelry, a toy, or a brightly-hued gum ball. Unless it was the former, I’d throw the item away or give it to my brother, Mark.
When we got older, Mark and I would fight over who got the prize from the box of Cracker Jack® we’d share. The prize was usually a ring. Of course, I wanted it and didn’t care about being fair.
So I resorted to secretly dumping the candied popcorn and peanuts out of the box. I retrieved the prize and replaced the box contents. I’d then act surprised when there was no prize. Mark never got suspicious of all the “defective” boxes.
As I got older, I started to get some serious jewelry. My family gave me a charm bracelet and it’s still my favorite. Its charms symbolize my various interests at the time, like horses and music. It’s too bad they didn’t make a charm for a rich Sugar Daddy. I would have added that to the bracelet, too.
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