I was trying to make an analogy, at a party this evening, about dating-slash-relationships, and the only thing I could think of on the spot was one of those claw machines. Like, you pump in your fifty cents or whatnot, hoping for the gold watch, but instead come away with the stuffed dolphin. (If you are so fortunate. If you come away with a prize at all.) So, you can either keep feeding the machine quarters to get the elusive gold watch, which btw is only there to lure you—ooh, shiny and expensive—into spending your money, or you can take the stuffed dolphin home and decide you love it because it is what you won by luck or chance or, if you deem it, “fate.” This comparison somehow, if it was not needlessly unwieldy enough, then was extrapolated upon as others joined in, as to how those prizes in the machine might conceive of themselves: sometimes you think you’re a gold watch, and you’re just a stuffed dolphin. Sometimes the stuffed dolphin really is the gold watch, but does not know it. (Because you see often those mismatched couples and think, how did the stuffed dolphin end up with the gold watch? And sometimes you’re like I know I’m the the stuffed dolphin and I’m happy to be dating the gold watch so go ahead and stare, I win!) And so the comparison, much like the thing itself, became then too abstract and yet also too specific to survive under too close scrutiny, and was subsequently abandoned.
