My toenail clippers were missing this morning when I went to get them. I like these clippers a lot; they're heavy, they fit my hand, they have a built-in file/lint-digger, the blades are deeply concave, and they don't have one of those chintzy peeling chrome jobs. I keep them tucked away in a purple box with some other low-priority toiletries, like band-aids and disposable razor blades.
Eileene has often wondered, aloud and pointedly, why I don't put them in the medicine cabinet, the sensible place for all toiletries. I keep them in my purple box because they're mine, and I don't want to share. If I put them in the medicine cabinet, they will no longer be mine; they will be ours. And if they're ours, then somebody will use them, drop them wherever they happen to fall, shove them into a corner a week later, and lose them. And then, instead of being somebody's, they will be nobody's.
Part of me feels petty for getting worked up over a lousy pair of toenail clippers. Hardly a matter of life and death, is it? On the other hand, inconsequential objects have a knack for becoming important to us: a favorite mug, a particular chair, the mechanical pencils that survive for seven years without getting lost. I wear jeans long after they've ceased to be wearable in public. (Occasionally, I wear them in public.) Eventually, these treasured artifacts succumb to entropy; they wear down, break entirely, or just drop through the cracks somewhere. That's life. And, ultimately, all these treasured little things are just stuff.
But while that stuff is still around, it's still important. I don't think there's anything wrong with being a little proprietary about trinkets we like, guarding them against theft or destruction.
Witness: we have at least three pairs of nail clippers in the house ? maybe four; I lose track ? but it's the nail clippers buried in the terribly inconvenient purple box that Eileene went to get when she needed some. Obviously, they need guarding.