Luxury Items

When it comes down to it, I've always been a gadget person -- with very few gadgets. My first sewing machine, an ancient thing I'd found in some crazy relative's attic with a crank shaft, led to the aquisition of something electric at an opening price point from the Sears catalog by the time I was about twelve. I had that thing for years, slowly, slowly teaching myself to follow a pattern and sew.

Most of the time, I simply can't afford the great new gadgets, things I consider luxury items; I just make do with used or cheap stuff, and try to console myself that it's the content one is busy creating that matters, not the gadgetry involved. Even my new DV cam isn't the latest and greatest. It's not HD, so it's merely something that the salesperson was glad to get off the shelf. Of course I'm determined to spin straw into gold with the thing, come hell or high water, but that's another post.

Recently, twice now, well-meaning, kindly folk have let me touch their iPhone. I was immediately entranced, and then pained with a Gollum-twinge of mean resentment when I had to hand the thing back. This has happened to me only once before with a material item (although on more than one occasion with boyfriends, but that too is another post), when a neighbor let me borrow her stunning, vintage, white mink coat for a party, and I caught myself unconsciously stroking the damn thing and plotting ways of somehow not returning it for one more day. Good grief.

But the same feeling of uncontrollable possessiveness came over me with the iPhone. It really did provoke moments of lust and desire when I had it in my grasp. And greed. Lots of greed.

God forbid I drive someone's Mercedes S class...