Relics
The Big Pig is dead. I killed it last night, in the kitchen. I regretted it as soon as it happened. It made an awful mess, and it took me a long time to clean up. I received a gash on my foot for my trouble.
The Big Pig was a pint glass, clear with a black Pig's Eye Beer logo on one side, and the large words "The Big Pig" on the other. It was a damn cool glass in it's own right, but I was primarily saddened because the Big Pig was a Relationship Relic. In fact, it was Jane and I's oldest relic, having been purchased (with an identical brother glass that died young, it's life also shattered by a moment of carelessness) some two weeks after we started dating many years ago.
To the best of my recollection, the Big Pigs were our first mutual purchase, although it was only recently that they became our oldest relic. That honor belonged to Old Red for many years.
Old Red was a hat, in the baseball style, with a faded red canvas cap and a faded green bill. Old Red was the kind of hat you could put in your back pocket if you didn't want to wear it.
I found Old Red on Jane and I's first date, laying by my car in the parking lot after a Minneapolis Loons game. Now, you might be asking "Who or what are the Minneapolis Loons?" And the more hygiene-conscious reader might also want to know why I would pick up a hat I found in a parking lot, much less wear it for six years. These questions deserve honest, straightforward answers.
The Loons were a short-lived independent minor league team. All I can tell you is they were managed by former Atlanta Brave Gregg Olsen, and had future Atlanta Brave Kerry Ligtenberg on the roster. But the main draw was former Twins folk hero Juan Berenguer, who had to be pushing 300 pounds. Unfortunately, Big Juan's services weren't needed that night, as the Loons opened a can of whup-ass on the Brainerd Brains.
So, we see the Loons, we leave the game, and there's Old Red, abandoned on the asphalt. Red looked clean, so I picked it up. You see, I like hats, and I have this idea that the best hats you'll have in your life always tend to find you. I'm not saying you can't go out and shop for a hat; you certainly can. It's just that in my experience, the best hats come to me via strange channels. You expect nothing from these hats, yet they often find their way onto your hook and into your rotation. Maybe it's because the found hat is likely already a broken-in hat. But I also like to think it's more than that-If you found a hat, you found it for a reason. I don't feel that way about many things in this life, but I do about some certain hats.
Old Red was such a hat. It always reminded me of our first date, a hulking Juan Berenguer, and perfect August night in 1994. (And now you know how our first date began. To find out how it ended, you'll have to join our subscription service for $6.95 a month. Recommended for those with T-1 lines only...)
But Old Red has been gone for a few years now, and the remaining Big Pig now joins him. What's our new Oldest Relationship Relic? I don't really know. I lost track. Things moved fast after that first date; we both let our guard down pretty quick. I suppose it seemed so natural, almost inevitable that we were going to be together for a long time that I just stopped keeping track of what was "ours", or "mine" or "hers".
Either that, or I just can't remember. 1994 seems like a long time ago.
9:12:56 AM 
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