Small Obsessions...

I love bottle caps.

There’s something so alluring about them. They’re like little metal gems. So varied, and often so artistic. I don’t think any two collections could be exactly alike. Some people collect paintings. I would, if I had the money, I guess. I’ll always collect bottle caps. Somewhere out there, a graphic artist put her or his time and brainpower into designing that cap. I appreciate that. We spend a lot of our time surrounded by art that we don’t even think about. Some people downplay it because it’s commercial art, intended to visually buttonhole us and ultimately weasel us out of our hard-earned dollars. I don’t think that’s completely fair.

It’s one thing if you bought the drink with the cap, but when you find one out on the street or in the grass, or best yet, someplace completely unexpected, then you start thinking about the story behind it. Where’d it come from? Who threw it away? Every bottle cap, whether you bought it or not, has a story, as hokey as that sounds.

I considered collecting them seriously once when I was ten or so. Maybe younger, maybe older, I honestly don’t remember how old I was. I had a gigantic brown shoebox in the hall closet filled with maybe thirty or forty old beer caps from brands my father drank. My father has always been an adventurous beer aficionado— every so often he likes trying small breweries for interesting flavors.

Most of the caps I collected were typical, ubiquitous brands you can find at the grocery store—Heineken, Miller, Michelob. Dad rarely had American beer, though. He never did, and still doesn’t buy Budweiser—can’t stand the stuff, ha. Yeah, there were a lot of typical caps there, but a few of them were real finds—stuff from tiny labels my dad purchased on a whim and would probably never try again.

One evening I looked inside the closet and opened up the shoebox only to find it empty. I scurried into the living room and called out into the house at no one in particular. “What happened to all the caps in that shoebox?”

Hands.

I'm still stuck on how to access the pictures that I took to accompany this post (and several others). That's primarily what's been keeping me away from posting. I hate being absent though, so here's the post anyway, sans pics.

*EDIT: Okay, obvious I fixed my picture issue. Here it is!

Before I could start attempting to learn the guitar again, I had a few things to do. I needed to fix my broken string (little high e was the victim of a terrible tuning accident) and get the sucker tuned. Now it’s in tip-top playing shape, seeing as it hasn’t really been touched for a number of years.

I also needed to pick up a simple book on learning, and a book of chords for support. Check and check. I still need a plectrum, but I’m not really playing anything at the moment, so I can wait a little and strum with my fingers. They were cheap, cheap, cheap, but they really do help. I should have bought these years ago.

But I sat around strumming a few simple chords, and I learned something—or, at least was reminded of something—that has completely changed the way I think about learning this gorgeous instrument.

I have some seriously small hands.

Seriously small hands.