we all have different priorities

My dad is under the mistaken impression that i could have bought a house with the money i have spent on earrings over the years. Every time he and my stepmother come to visit me i see them shaking their heads and issuing a silent "tut-tut" at the collection of earrings i have hanging on my wall.

First of all, this collection has been amassed over thirty-some-odd years, and it isn't like i spent inordinate amounts of money on the things (i couldn't afford to~both because i never have inordinate amounts of money available to me and also because i'm always loosing earrings.)

Losing earrings has somehow been one of the biggest, oft-occurring tragedies of my life. I buy earrings because i like something about whatever pair it is, its uniqueness, it's catitude, or whatever. Often the ones i own are irreplaceable (not because of their monetary worth, but because of their availability.) One lost earring is usually not that big of a tragedy because i seldom wear matching earrings (i figure different earrings in each available hole offers more display room and, along with my black toenails, is one of my signatures.) The main problem comes when i loose my only remaining earring or the pair happens to offer two different "perspectives" (the same image only mirrored, one earring has the western hemisphere and one the eastern, or, one of my favorite pairs "IN ONE EAR" and "OUT THE OTHER".) Occasionally i will catch an image of myself in the mirror and wonder how i ended up with matching earrings.

Because i have such a tendancy to loose these precious baubles i am always paranoid of vacuming my living room floor or sweeping my bedroom floor for fear of loosing them eternally. If i do either of these dreaded activities (not that i'm dying to anyway) i search through the debris for any strays and have admonished my mother to do the same...