I sort of have this thing for dishes. Okay, I'm addicted to collecting dishes. I think it may stem from an incident in my earlier years. I was traumatized during my childhood when my mama tried to teach me to cook. I let the water scorch and stick to the pot and almost burned down the house while attempting to bake a potato. She banned me from the kitchen and told me in no uncertain terms, "Honey, I declare, when you get married your family will starve to death unless you marry a chef." 

I took this to mean she thought I'd never learn to cook. I did learn eventually...after the invention of the microwave, the crock pot and frozen pizza.

Nevertheless, I have always loved collecting dishes. Sometimes I'll buy an odd plate at a yard sale or flea market that doesn't match anything else, simply because I like the pattern. None of my dishes are Blueridge Pottery, nothing really "collectible" or worth a fortune, small or otherwise. They're mostly just old stoneware or cheap china. I put them in my dining room, my kitchen, and even as decoration in my office at home. I had a china cabinet full of cups and plates, a plate rack in the kitchen with more plates and even more of them on a shelf along the dining room wall. Hubby called it "The Great Wall of China". 

But while it's fun collecting them, keeping them clean is not. It can take days to take them all down, wash them and put them back again. I can't understand how dishes can get dirty while sitting on the shelf. It's not like they're running around playing in the dirt or anything. They just sit there being good little dishes, yet they are attacked for no reason by the grime monsters. 

And cobwebs! What are these things and where on earth do they come from? It seems like I can clean away every cobweb in the house and by nightfall they've returned. I think we need to call an exterminator. Evidently we are overrun by "cobs". I didn't realize how bad they really were until I made some pictures of my daughter blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. When I downloaded the photos to my computer, there in plain sight, as vivid as a red flag in a snowdrift was a "gianormus" cobweb dangling from the shelf behind her. What a ghastly sight. It looked like something out of an episode of The Munsters. The photos were ruined. No way would I allow them to be shown outside the family. They might have been okay if had been around Halloween, but this was in February.

After that little fiasco, I washed up all the dishes and stored them in the cabinets and in boxes in the closet. 

But then my sister-in-law bought me a teapot. It was the cutest little thing and it reminded me of a tea set I had when I was a little girl. So, of course I started collecting teapots. Before I knew it I had a huge collection of them all over the house, just waiting for the cobs to come and make their webs in them. 

I think I may need to retire my teapot collection soon however. I'm getting laughed at again. Hubby and I were having dinner the other night when he looked around the dining room and started to laugh. 

"What's funny," I asked.

"You," he said. "I thought you stopped collecting dishes." 

"These aren't dishes," I sniffed. "They're teapots."

"Oh I get it," he continued still laughing. "You removed the Great wall of China in order to have enough room for The Boston Tea Potty." 
I hope he enjoyed the rest of his dinner as much as he enjoyed his little joke. I haven't cooked for him since. 

Copyright 2008 Leeuna Foster

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Leeuna Foster is a Marketing Strategist, Author and Poet. Although she enjoys writing in all genres, her favorite is children's short stories.

Leeuna is a columnist for hometown paper, The Beacon. Her work has also appeared in ByLine Magazine, Modern Romances, Happiness Magazine, Grit, The Advocate, The Erwin Record and Johnson City Press Chronicle. Her books are available in print as well as in ebook form. Her poetry and children's fiction have won several national and regional awards.

She is also a syndicated author at www.ideamarketers.com , and has achieved Expert Author status at www.ezinearticles.com .