• My Audrey Hepburn purse, stained with Christmas window paint

  • The battery holder on my digital camera, broken the day I received it

  • My computer, which I have had for a year

  • The frayed, salt-stained cuffs of every pair of pants I own

  • The keepsake pocket of my journal

  • My salt-faded red Pumas, which can never be restoreod to their former glory

  • My new red sweater, with a hole in one seam

  • My Nick-and-Nora rubber duck pajamas, the bottom button ripped since day one

  • The right-hand pocket of my winter coat, ripped

  • The small tear in the Ewan MacGregor “Truth” poster of my Moulin Rouge four poster set; the stains from that blue poster goo on my Italian Notorious poster

  • The volume control on my computer speakers, mushed when dropped

  • The scrolling wheel on my mouse, stopped working when water was spilled on it

  • The red nail polish stains on my keyboard and desk

  • My khakis, stained with ink less than a month after their acquisition

  • The breaking handle and scuffed bottom of my (non-Audrey Hepburn) purse

  • The folded, water-damaged covers of every book I’ve carried around in my bag while reading, especially Greenmantle by John Buchan and the ink-stained Death Comes for the Archbishop

  • Every single one of those double-CD cases that look like one CD but are actually two, somehow broken

  • My variously broken and chipped striped ’70s coffeeset



This is why I shouldn’t have nice things. I always break them slightly right away and then get used to having them damaged.