A (non-tall) Tale

There's a mug that I've used growing up. It was a family mug, of course, open to anyone's use, but I would try to get to it before anyone else. Oddly, it wasn't very pretty. It came in a set of three, all with flowers on them. One had blue flowers, another had purple flowers, and my special mug had yellow flowers--and not exactly a pretty yellow. In fact, the mug, compared to the other two, is considerably ugly. But I loved it! And, interestingly enough, its homeliness helped it survive long past the other two. The other two, because of their extra charm, were more often used by everyone else, and my mug was avoided. So if you add it up, seven people using a mug, as apposed to just one, will greatly increase the chances of an accident happening.

The ugliness was so pronounced that I remember an occasion when my mom voiced a plan to "accidentally" drop it and ruin it forever, therefore gaining the excuse to throw it away. Fortunately, I was there to hear her, so I was able to say, "NOOOO!!" and save my precious mug from heartless destruction.

This mug wasn't my favorite one, though. I had other mugs that I liked almost equally. So I didn't notice when it was no longer living on the mug shelf. (Gimme a break... we had a lot of mugs!) It must have been at least five years ago that it disappeared. Because when I found it about two months ago (under the washer-room sink, next to toilet cleaning supplies, containing a small amount of white powdery stuff, totally rejected as a kitchen mug), I felt like I'd just discovered a dear friend I hadn't seen for years and years!

I snatched it out from the cabinet, wrapped it in a plastic bag (because I wasn't sure what that white stuff was...) and took it home without saying a word to anyone about it. Once I got home, I rinsed it out with scalding water, scrubbed it with dish washing detergent more than once, then set it aside to dry. It is now my favorite mug with no competition, and as I type this it is sitting next to me containing delicious coffee. If mugs could have feelings, I'm sure that this mug is the happiest mug in the cupboard, after coming from a such a humbled state to such an exalted one! Unless, in its use of feelings, it decided it didn't like me in return. Then that would be a completely different story...