A Little Nut

Okay, I had a minute, and I looked at some pictures on my desktop, and saw this. This has nothing to do with the previous post, nor with anything of immediate relevance. I just thought I'd show you something which no one else will ever show you. It is a wall poster of a bygone era in my native land, China. The genre was known as the New Year Pictures. They typically hang on household walls till they yellowed and curled around the corners at the end of the year, just in time to be replaced by newer ones for the incoming year. Now I'm showing you this one because one exactly like it used to hang on the wall in our commune house built of wood and mud, when I was about 8 or 9. According to my Mom she bought it because she thought the girl looked just like me. And so said everyone else who ever saw it and compared it with me.

In hind sight, as a little girl I was never that chubby. But by gosh, a poster girl looked just like me! My vanity was greatly satisfied and enlarged.

Unless I explain, you would never be able to decipher on your own the meaning of the metal nut the little girl holds in her hand: you see, in our great Communist, Serve-the-People Republic, everyone was equal. Everyone was a small part of the great machine that was the State. As the title of the pictures declares: I Am a Little Nut. The tiny part of the great machine. That was her, and by extension, my, purpose of existence. Get it?

The word on that box behind the little girl? It says: "Conservation."