Bookmarks

Are you a "beautiful and proper bookmark" person, or a "grab whatever is handy when I'm done for the moment" kind of person?

Generally, as illustrated by the photo above, I am the latter. The book on the top is using the book cover as a bookmark. These are very handy as they do not get lost while I am reading, and as long as someone else doesn't carelessly pick up the book, my place is saved quite nicely.

My place in the second book down is being kept by the bookmark the library gave to me when I picked up the book. Generally it is referred to as a "reserve slip," but I like to call myself green (at least a pale green anyway), and so I recycle them as bookmarks.

In the third book we are sporting the "torn off the nearest slip of paper" bookmark. Another way to recycle paper, and if they are lost there is always another one around to replace it.

The bottom book is sporting one of my favorite kinds of bookmarks, the "I just finished a delicious piece of chocolate and now I have a bookmark" bookmark. These are very tasty in the beginning, fun to look at, and delicious to replace.

Over the years I have purchased bookmarks, the cardboard or plastic kind with tassels attached to the top and clever sayings about reading or life. I've also received the metal kind which are often laser cut into beautiful designs and may also have a clever saying on them. These usually come home and are promptly placed into a book and then they just as promptly disappear into the twilight zone (not the vampire kind, but the old 60's TV show kind). However, somehow I usually come across these lost treasures when I am no where near a book to stick them into, as well as no desire to stop what I am doing and put them in a book, and so they stay locked away in a drawer somewhere.

One year my thoughtful son brought back a gold bookmark from Stanford where he had spent a week at a debate camp. I used it in a book and then worried that I would loose it so I placed it in our cup of pens and now it is lost or missing or both. I have been very disappointed with myself for losing this particular bookmark because it represents my son's thoughtfulness, and I sometimes need to be reminded of his thoughtfulness.

So imagine my delight and dismay when I received this beauty from a wonderful friend.

It is a beautiful silver bookmark with a lovely bobble on the end.

I am so delighted that my wonderful friend thought of me at the holidays, and that she remembers how much I like to read, and so therefore I would love a beautiful bookmark like this. And the fact that she made it with her very own hands makes it all the more special. And now the dilemma! Knowing my past history with beautiful bookmarks, I'm afraid to take it out of the package! I suppose I could loose it just as easily in the package as out of the package, but. . . now what???