One of the unfortunately symptoms of being from a family of five children is that dishes never lasted too long, especially the fun ones. What, you may ask, constitutes a fun set of dishes? The once ubiquitous peanut butter glasses and the delightful series of Disney promotional glasses from McDonald's. For so many years, companies sold their peanut butter in reusable glasses as a means to bolster business. They were insanely popular and have since become popular collector's items. I mean, c'mon; just look at that image above with the intrepid, Errol Flynn face of Robin Hood. Who wouldn't want to have that gracing the water glass section of their cupboard?
I will admit that I don't recall my parents purchasing our peanut butter in these glasses, as it wouldn't even satisfactorily cover five children's toast even at one breakfast sitting. However, we did inherit a series of mismatched glasses from sundry relatives as they changed their living arrangements and downsized to more cozy quarters (read: the cemetery). In this instance there was never any fighting over who had the privilege of using the newly-emptied and freshly-washed PB glass. However, being on the receiving end of so many deceased relatives' glassware normalized the concepts of death and dying if only because we knew we'd soon have an influx of something original into the cupboards to replace all the glasses broken by a series of 'butter fingers.'
The fights among me and my siblings were over the limited number of McDonald's glassware.* Chief among them the Disney glasses sold in the early- to mid-1980s. Sure, the screen printed designs chipped after years of heavy use and the ink faded after repeated cycles in the dishwasher (I hear the cumulative gasp of kitsch collectors everywhere), but those glasses were very popular mostly because we had three glasses for five kids. Being the object of our respective affections, we inadvertently killed them with kindness and, one-by-one, they shattered like so many dreams of sipping from our golden goblets of Disney commercialism.
As is a common theme in this blog, I'm an adult now with the wherewithal to purchase not only the Disney glasses, but also peanut butter glasses; however, my adult doesn't want mismatched glassware. No, I will have one or two matching sets of these glasses. Only an adolescent would have one-offs. It takes a real grownup to possess a complete set and use them at nice dinners when you've special company showing up. One minor risk is that one's guests may also have come from very competitive households and liable to nick one of your treasures to fill with ice cold milk to accompany their PB&J sandwich at lunch. Note to self: purchase extras.
*In a sign that surely foreshadowed the development of my sexuality, I favoured the "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" glass.
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