KING KONG SOUVENIR FROM NEW YORK

I really liked this when I saw it in the store. After buying it I obsessively worried I'd break the antenna off the top. See how skinny it is? It looked really fragile. I was making a conscious effort to baby it all day while site-seeing. When I got it back to the hotel I'd worked myself up into a nervous wreck. I realize now it's silly but it consumed my every thought for the several days while I was there. If it broke it would ruin the whole thing. It wouldn't look like the Empire State Building anymore. I kept thinking about how much more handling it was going to receive before I could finally sit it on a shelf back at home. I just new those guys in the airport would fling it in the baggage truck and snap it off.



In the hotel room I carefully wrapped toilet paper around the antenna, and then wrapped tape around that, and then I wrapped that with newspaper and that with a sock. Then I put that in a bag and wrapped that in a t-shirt, and put that in my boot. Then I placed the boot in the center of my suitcase with clothes surrounding all sides of it.

All the way home I fretted about it. When I got home I opened the layers of wrappings and was relieved to see it was still intact. At closer examination I learned it was a pressed-in antenna and it was made of very flexible rubber. I don't think it would have broken even if it were dropped from the Empire State Building. Now I have mixed feelings about it. I don't like it as much after learning it's not all fragile. I don't know why.