Souvenirs and Such

“She never did decide (on joining a church).  She did develop a terrific hankering for a crucifix, though.  And she bought one from a Santa Fe gift shop during a trip the little family made out West during the Great Depression.  Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”  Slaughterhouse-Five, pg. 49

My quest to find a souvenir took me pretty far (and by “pretty far” I mean the TCU Bookstore). So after looking around a bit, I found this TCU mug.

It may not seem like anything, and it isn’t really, but my mom and I have this tradition where we collect mugs from different colleges. It began when I started visiting colleges at the beginning of my junior year. My mom and I rarely take trips together just the two of us, so when we made our travels plans to look at different universities we decided we would turn it into mother daughter time. I looked at nine different schools, and on every one of these trips it was just my mom and me. Since I applied to a bunch of random schools scattered across the country, it gave us the opportunity to go visit a bunch of states I probably would’ve never seen. So for every school I visited, we bought a mug. Even when I visited a school I knew I wasn’t going to go to, we still bought one just for the heck of it. Over time it became our tradition.

Below is a picture of one of these mugs we collected. It’s from the University of Chicago which I visited last winter. We have mugs from all over the place: Seattle, Boston, Santa Clarita, San Francisco, and of course, Texas.

So when I wandered into the bookstore and saw the large collections of mugs, it immediately reminded me of all the trips I took with my mom the past two years.



Initially after I read this line from Slaughterhouse 5, I’ll admit I found it very peculiar and maybe a little pathetic. Like, who actually buys stuff from gift shops? But then I thought about it and realized we are all probably guilty to some degree. That’s why Vonnegut says "Like most Americans". We buy little trinkets and stupid toys to represent things that we deem are important. We give them sentimental value. So yes, there does seem to be some truth to the idea that we try to make sense out of these things we find in gift shops. Otherwise we wouldn’t buy them right?

P.S. Don’t forget to check out the links to my other group members' blogs!

http://smileswithmackie.blogspot.com/
http://kfaciane.blogspot.com/