Mugs

   Off to the right is a pic of my favourite mug. It's my favourite for a variety of reasons. It was given to me by Doralyn back near the start of our relationship when our lives were awash in turmoil and the sentiment on the cup was what we were living by at the time. Apart from that, it just feels right, both in my hand and when I'm drinking from it. It seems to hold the right amount of coffee, as well.
   My job takes me into many different people's houses and apartments and they all have a shelf where they keep their coffee and tea mugs. Generally, taking a gander at someone's collection of mugs is somewhat akin to peeking through their medicine cabinets--in an unspoken way you absorb information about them. Sometimes it's what's on the mugs, sometimes it's whether they're stacked or not, are they placed on the shelf bottom-up or bottom-down, or are they even on a shelf, maybe they're hanging from hooks or on a mug tree. Just from looking at a person's mug collection you can get some ideas of where they've been in the world, where they've worked or gone to school, how old they are, what their favourite colour is, what their sex is (if you weren't sure already), what their religious and political orientations might be, what their sense of humour is like, and so on. Often, you get an idea of what their sensibilities are, how they feel about things.
   From my observations over the years, here is a composite of how many mug collections are constituted:

   a Tim's mug (almost a given, for coffee-drinkers anyway...)
   a humourous birthday mug, denoting the drinker's advanced age
   a set of mugs from a previous life, one's missing, one's chipped
   one or two mugs with inspirational sayings (see above)
   a sports team mug
   a super-hero mug
   a pet mug
   one stolen mug
   a souvenir mug from a trip abroad
   a "novelty" mug, almost unusable as an actual mug
   one or two travel mugs, often used as just regular mugs
   one or two "holiday" mugs eg. Christmas, Father's Day, Easter,...
   a "John Deere" or a "Nascar" mug (man's, usually)
   a "work" mug, with some kind of business logo on it
   please feel free to add to the list...

The "obligatory" Tim's mug

   Just the number of mugs tells you something about a person; how important coffee or tea is to them and how it fits into their lives, perhaps how sociable they are. How a person feels about the bottom-up, bottom-down issue is probably relevant. I know some people who store their mugs right side up so that the rims don't touch the dirty shelf and some that store them upside-down so they don't collect dust inside them. I imagine this will tell you something elemental about the mugs' owner, if you extrapolate just a touch.
   I think each mug sits you down into a slightly different zone when you use it, depending on your mutual history. This is definitely what happens with me and my favourite mug--it gets me to my coffee with a sense of rightness, for lack of a better word. Necessarily, it will sit in the dishwasher for a day or two at a time, but I'm always somewhat relieved when it is back in the fold again!


Handle broke but couldn't bear to part with it!

   Hopefully none of you have suddenly become paranoid about your mug collection and what it says about you. I think that if you have reached the point where you are visiting with someone at your house for tea, coffee or maybe even hot chocolate then they have likely already formed some sort of lasting impression about you that will not be affected by your choice of mugs over the years. Be proud of yourself, be proud of your mugs!