It was beautiful while it lasted, Brad.

Brad made reference a few posts back to a piece of pottery that he made in high school that he later gave to me as a gift, together with a note saying he made the bowl for me and that he wished me all the best. He signed the note, "Your BFF, Brad."

I'm lying.

Brad did not give me the bowl. Nor, it goes without saying, did he write me a note. I took the bowl without his permission when his parents, noting how I was pathetically and chronically breaking the Tenth Commandment, offered me the bowl in his absence.

Note: No, despite what you might be thinking, I was not guilty of coveting his ass, as explicitly prohibited in that particular commandment--it was the bowl that I wanted. That and his friendship, but, alas, Brad's parents could not secure that for me.

I think in giving me the bowl they said something like: "Why would Brad want it? Sure, go ahead and take it."

My response was, "But....but....this is art! I mean, this is genuine art. I couldn't take it!!

To which they said, "It'd just gather dust anyway. You're doing us all a favor."

So I did them all a favor and took the bowl.

Now what Brad wrote about my response to the bowl is accurate. I did find this bowl to magically function as the pottery equivalent of Prozac, which is why I dubbed it The Happy Bowl--and also why I insisted that others refer to it as such as well.

No really, I insisted.

I keep this piece of art in my office at work, and it's one of my favorite possessions. Truly. For years and years, every time I brought this bowl up to my face to crowd out out all other visuals--which I did with surprising frequency--I could not suppress smiling or, as often, laughing.

As students and colleagues alike could attest were they to visit this blog (but, gratefully, do not), I have been known to challenge them to stare closely at the bowl without smiling. Though I confess a few soulless pod people could resist the need to smile, the vast majority of persons would eventually succumb to the warm and giddy glow of irrational happiness that the bowl inevitably generates.

It's truly blessed, this happy bowl.

With Brad's all-too-brief appearance on this blog--what, with all the promise that it brought--and now with his just as sudden, and likely permanent, disappearance, I confess to seeing the bowl today in a sadder and wiser fashion. Now it is a poignant and melancholy, though far from hateful, sight to me.

Just don't ask me to look at it for too long.

Note: I have added a photo to the original post about Brad. It's part of the skeleton ball he made--another of my favorite possessions. I fear, that the rubber bands are disintegrating and the ball is shedding itself of skeletons at an alarming rate. The deterioration has been sudden and shocking. This photo of the still relatively robust and healthy skeleton ball was taken a few years ago. Now the sight is not nearly as pretty.