If it’s Christmas week, and you’re still running around with a list of people to buy for and no idea what you’ll get them, chances are you’ll buy them something they may re-gift.
Personally, I don’t think re-gifting is as awful as some make it out to be. The other night I was in my local Beall’s Outlet and heard people talking about it like it was something shameful. They probably have entire drawers full of fruitcakes. I say just give them to someone who actually likes fruitcake. It’s like recycling. Feel good about it.
Anyway, I was also thinking that since everybody’s so maxed out on their schedules, wouldn’t it be great to find that one true gift that would be perfect for everyone? Then I began to wonder what I would choose if I had to give everyone in my life the exact same thing? The answer came quickly. I’d give them Terry Border’s relatively new book, Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things.
I got hooked on Border’s blog shortly after he launched it a few years back, and I blame him for the jars of wine corks in my kitchen, the little stories I sometimes imagine about fruits, peanuts and Cheez Doodles, and the fact that I cannot look in my spice cabinet and see Basil Leaves or Crushed Rosemary without imagining the drama of it all and laughing.
Border photographs everyday objects in settings that bring them to life. The cover of the book portrays a Cheez Doodle and a Pringle, both with wire limbs that could easily have been twisted from paperclips, sitting beside each other on a white couch. The fact that the Pringle – and the entire couch – is covered in orange says all we really need to know. Another Pringle with no orange coloring is walking in the door. There is trouble in Snackland.
I love the stories implied by Border’s photographs, and the stories they inspire us to conjure. I want to know that my friends are imagining dancing Froot Loops, or tales about the twisted life of pretzels or dueling tubes of toothpaste, one neatly squeezed from the bottom up and the other haphazardly squeezed in the middle, with no cap on. OK, so I just made up the whole last paragraph but the point is that this is what happens to you after reading Bent Objects, the book or the blog.
The book, however, is special as it provides the story behind the stories, a peak into the mind of the man behind the Cheez Doodle. In case it’s not obvious, the Cheez Doodle is one of my favorites. In fact the photograph featured here, titled At the Party, really speaks to me. I have been there. I have felt that. It brings a smile to my face to know that poor little Cheez Doodle has been there too. I love that little Cheez Doodle.
