Delight in the Useless

Today I discovered all over again how much I love useless things. Useless, perfect little things. I spent a good while thinking up excuses for excusing my liking for little useless things. But, as I get older (not old, older) I can start to see why I did some of the weird stuff I did as a little kid (and, ok, a big kid.) It's a love of useless things, and it seems to be a godly trait ;)

So, Ethan and I zipped off to the Educational Supply at about 11:30 to pick up the pattern blocks Mom had ordered for him. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not Elsie Dinsmore. I didn't want to go. I wanted to be stuffy and bask in uninterrupted serenity at the dining room table (haha) drowning in the Everest-type mound of books, folders, and notebooks that's been accumulating on my dresser. But I went.

It's always kind of odd taking my little brother places in public, holding his hand and being all motherly, wondering if people think he's my kid. I can't resist, though, the warm, melty feeling I get when he voluntarily places his hand in mine as we cross the parking lot. At those times I figure, well, he is mine, right now. Who cares what they think!

Walking into the Ed. Supply, for me, is somewhat like what walking into Aeropostale is for other girls. An undercurrent of excitement ready to erupt into squeals of delight. I rarely buy anything, but I like to look. I like experiencing sensory overload, taking in the smell of hot glue and the warmth of the packed room splashed with the rainbow colors of posters and workbooks.

While I inquired after the pattern blocks, E found the magnets. I have a weakness for magnets. Every time I'm at the Ed. Supply I look at them, but of course, they're of no use to me. Especially those bright, plastic covered magnetic marbles-- but those are the coolest kind!

That's sort of thing I was always fascinated with as a little kid, but of course, you don't get those sort of things for birthdays or Christmas. You get toys. You get light-up PJ Sparkle dolls. You get doll houses and books and tea sets and pink synthetic nightgowns that make you cry. But nobody ever thinks to get you magnetic marbles, and you never ask, because, well, what would you do with the things?

No, really, I've had a great childhood, and for the record, I loved PJ Sparkles :) But I always felt weird for liking little useless things. In reality, I think every kid falls in love with tiny things. That's why some genius came up with Polly Pockets and Micro Machines. Before I got an efficient streak, was a fool for anything collectable. I had a rock for every day of the week (and holidays) which I displayed on a cord and wire around my neck everday when I was twelve. At the age of seven, My friend Chelsea and I played "Petshop" for hours with our impressive collections of miniscule plastic animals. We fought over them. We stole each other's Petshop. And we always argued over whose turn it was to get "Mom Cat," the petite, cream-colored cat with the gorgeous cerulean eyes. Why? She was tiny, beautiful, and perfect. And in case Mom is still looking for an explanation about why I kept a dead mole in my nightstand for three days when I was five...that rather stiff lump of shimmery, silky nut-brown fur...well. It's just a sudden hypothesis that in every kid, and every healthy adult, there's something that's fascinated by small and useless do-dads.

That's why Ethan went straight over there and started messing around with those marbles. When I saw him, and saw that the marbles were only 19 cents a piece, we promptly picked out six. And bought them. I was thinking, "That's just what I would have wanted!"

Reveling in the joy of little things, I took special notice of the tree outside the building on the way out. I'd seen it when we had come in, and its small, heart-shaped leaves had caught my attention. They reminded me of Aspens (my favorite tree ever since we went camping in Colorado five years ago). The leaves were smooth, and some of them were reddening and falling off. There were clusters of a roundish green fruit on the branches. So, be it lawful or not (is it ok to pick other people's plants?) I plucked a leafed, fruited branch end and took it home for further study. "It might come in handy in a story sometime," I thought.

As we drove home with our pattern blocks, magnet marbles, and mystery flora, I mulled over a happy sort of discovery. There's a reason I'm a packrat! There's a reason I love staring at small objects, handling them, piddling with them, and dooming them to a "collection" stuck in the closet somewhere! Maybe God made me to get fascinated by the details and store them up so that I could WRITE about them! Maybe it's so that I can enrich a mental world on paper enough to communicate ideas and evoke emotions in others! It's not that I'm skilled at this yet, but I guess I have a natural tendency to like the insignificant things that don't seem to matter to "real" life, and that can be developed into a skill for writing! Yay!

Besides making something "useful" out of useless things, trying to tell myself I'm not a mental case (I just like to write- is there a difference?) I think that God likes little things Himself. I'm not trying to spiritualize everything, only to give you a taste of the happiness that's in my heart today that God, who seems too large and busy to take notice of such "mitey" beings, cares about so much more than even our basic needs.

"Who [waters] a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?" Job 37:26-27

Hmm. I wonder! :)

Andree Seu, an essay writer for World Magazine (I love her articles and sometimes find myself trying to write like her!) said, in her last World Article, "The Uselessness of Delight,"

"Delight is the most useless of things. It doesn't get the house clean or the bills paid. Useless-- like flowers. Like rainbows. Like Beethoven's 9th...it seeks a getaway vacation with the beloved when it's not convenient... What is less efficient than the story of mankind? If it were about efficiency, God would have wiped the plate clean and commenced with more promising subjects. The Bible in entirety is a love story, a tale of unquenchable delight- His for us, finally ours for Him."