Ham [antikvár]

1. Unwrapped When I was nineteen years old, while helping my aunt Betty reorganize her kitchen cabinets, I discovered a beaten and worn plastic Mary Poppins cup and saucer marooned in the back corner of an ignored shelf. Hiey were issued in 1964, the year of the movie's release. My aunt told me they'd been intended for me when I was little, but my father had returned them to her because I was "too obsessed with Mary Poppins and singing and dancing." In the next room, my dad, uncle, brother, and all four boy cousins could be heard yeUing in that guttural, grunting Cro-Magnon caterwauling exclusively reserved for watching football games on television and killing wild pigs on a hunt. I marched into the living room and presented the cup and saucer wdth outstretched arms. "Do you remember these?" I said, my confrontational passion unbefitting some battered old plastic children's dishes. They all stared at me, confused, as if I'd just asked for an honest opinion about the chances of a fashion comeback for the ascot. "Uh, no, son," said my father. "Ask your mother."