A Few Musings on Faddishness and Uniqueness

I met this gorgeous fellow at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center

Have you noticed that people tend to go through fads with kitchens and small children? I've been somewhat intrigued by following them over the years since just after college, when I started noticing them.

First there were baskets and fake ivy. Just about any kitchen I walked into in the 1980s featured lots of baskets cluttering the tops of the kitchen cabinets or hutches, with fake ivy trailing across or down. Around that time, pop-out bay windows over the kitchen sinks became popular, sporting little cacti or potted herbs in them. Then it was the era of barnyard animals on the kitchen hand towels and potholders: ducks, cows, chickens and roosters and suchlike. And now? Now we're into the chrome-and-glass era. Appliances sport the brushed chrome of the sixties, and kitchen cabinets with clear or rippled glass doors are in, again reminiscent of the industrial look.

Another faddish target of decor is the nursery.  I haven't kept track of these particular fads for as long, considering I've just acquired grandchildren in the last ten years. But along with the princesses, cars, and teddy bears, I've noticed the Noah's Ark nursery era, and the Jungle Animals in Sage-and-Brown nursery era. And now we seem to be into the Owls and Fat 70's-Style Flowers nursery era. [Just for the record, I think owls and bright, fat 70's flowers are cute.]

Sometimes I think it would be fun to do something counter-cultural, like maybe decorate a nursery (not that I will ever have the opportunity) like Gilligan's Island with a thatched roof over the crib and a bamboo rocker. Or like a Tibetan monastery, or a Namibian desert. Or in the kitchen it might be fun to cook everything in a wok, or install a bright red refrigerator in place of our white one. By the way, how come I can't find good electric woks these days? They used to be a hot gift item. I need one.

It's funny, isn't it, how we are sometimes driven to do the "in thing," and at other times we individuate with the intent that no one else in the world could possibly be like us--although it's very unlikely that any person is truly going to find uniqueness. What is this push-pull of the community versus the hermit in our minds?  Sometimes I think there will always be a bit of the teenager left in us, looking for a tribe while simultaneously wondering who I might be if I were standing out on a mountaintop all alone.