I noticed a cup in our cupboard this morning.  It has a photo on it that’s faded to near invisibility. But you can still make out the words on the other side.

It was a cup I had made for Deb one Mother’s Day long ago.

I don’t usually think of these things ahead of time. I’m more of a “What? That’s today??!” kind of guy.

But this particular year, I was on the ball.  I planned in advance.

I picked a photo of the three kids and brought the negative to the photo place. On one side would be the photo and on the other side would be the words: “The Best Mommy in the World.”

Five days later, with a bit more than a week to go before Mother’s Day, I picked up my cup and went home.

I decided to look at the cup sometime later.

Instead of a photo of my cute kids posing together, there was a photo of an elderly couple.  And no words…

The next day, I went back to the store and explained that they had given me the wrong cup.

I expected them to be able to give me the correct one.

I was wrong.

They had no idea who had my cup.

It turned out that they did this process offsite and my cup was shipped off to someone else.  It was unlikely that the elderly couple got my cup. They got someone else’s cup.

I imagined a domino effect of hundreds of people ending up with someone else’s cup.

They apologized and took down my information again.

Five days later, I got my cup.

This time I opened it at the store.

It had the correct photo.

But instead ‘world’, they had typed ‘word.’

To the best Mommy in the WORD???

I lost it.

I went ballistic.

They promised to correct it and put a rush on it.

A few days later, I got a new cup with the correct photo and the correct words.

And I got to keep the “defective” cup.

The thing is… the whole situation was so important to me back then.

I got REALLY upset.

I was outraged at the inconvenience.

But now? More than twenty-five years later?

It’s funny.

And it didn’t take me a quarter of a century to find it funny.  I got there much sooner.

But still, at the time I was furious.

There are many things that I thought were so IMPORTANT at the time and are meaningless now.

I still overreact at some things.  Someone cutting me off.  Rude people.  Little things.

I need to let those little things fade away sooner. Like the words on that cup.