English: A Tuxedo made out of duct tape. This is a photo of my brother, he has agreed to release it under the GFDL. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We’ve all seen the ads. Child/husband/baby-sitter/house-sitter mucks about in the house or has a party without permission. Mum’s favourite vase or ornament gets broken and the offending person searches frantically for a replacement, which ends up costing a mint. Yellow pages. Let your fingers do the walking.
In reality, though, the most likely thing to get broken in any given home are the glasses and the crockery – not the cheapest thing to replace, but nothing to break the bank either. And the person who broke them is unlikely to replace them anyway. Usually, they will simply put the rest of the dishes away and hope it isn’t noticed until long after the event, when it’s too late to blame any particular person.
I’ve broken a few dishes in my time, but my kids have taken it to a new level. They have reduced my eight person setting to a four or five dinner plates seven bread and butter plates, two bowls and a few mugs. All in the space of a few months. I now have to spend my birthday money buying new plates – I’m considering plastic.
Something else I break quite regularly is phones. I am a klutz with butter fingers and phones just seem to fall from my hands. The damage is never fatal though – a few scratches, a wonky back – nothing a bit of duct tape won’t fix.
The most expensive item I have ever broken, however, was my husband’s scooter. He was trying to teach my how to ride it and I missed the bit about how you need to lean when you turn. I rode into a tree.
I saw it coming, I truly did. But I was scared and I gripped the handle harder instead of letting go. Unlike a bicycle, however, gripping the handle did not make me stop. It made me go faster.
Thankfully, most of the damage to the scooter was cosmetic. Pricey to repair but not essential or urgent. I came out of it with just a few scrapes and bruises and a grade 3 sprain in my ankle.
I have not, to my knowledge, broken anything expensive beyond repair. Of course, I could be wrong about that – my memory was never very good.
What’s the most expensive thing you’ve ever broken?
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