Tupperware Love Affair

Anita Garner

The dog ate my favorite Tupperware bowl.  Several times a week I reached for it – the biggest one Tupperware made – but it wasn’t there anymore and it hadn’t been there for years.  That bowl could do everything. I had a sense memory of it and kept reaching for an imaginary replacement.

It was bigger than a breadbox, bigger than any of my cupboards, which is why it lived on top of the fridge.  Then we got our sheepdog, Emily, who destroyed it. She ate my beloved Tupperware Jadeite Fix N Mix Bowl. My fault for putting leftovers on the patio for her in that bowl.  She never outgrew the chewing stage, and how much of a challenge was a plastic bowl when this dog could chew a corner off the house?

I’m not the only person who’s a little bit crazy about my favorite Tupperware.  My mother threatened to make my brother and me sign a contract before we could take home leftovers in one of her prized pieces.

So decades after Emily ate my bowl I still hadn’t replaced it, and one day I spotted a duplicate in a thrift shop in Mill Valley, California.  This one isn’t the greenish color, but it’s identical in every other way.  It’s now on top of my fridge where it belongs and when it’s not working, it holds bags of chips and snacks.

One Christmas, I wanted to get my granddaughter her own giant Tupperware bowl and fill it with cookie cutters, but when I glanced at the catalogs I found they’d changed.  I didn’t wait to see if they were better, I just determined to find an old one.  There they are on ebay under “vintage.”  I bid on one in the original color and I lost, bid and lost, bid and lost, grew weary of the chase and finally gave up and overpaid in a “buy it now” column” and got one of the original Tupperware bowls in a mustard color.

Now my daughter and her daughter have their own behemoth bowl that doesn’t fit into any of the cupboards in their city apartment in.  They’ll thank me later.

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3 thoughts on “Tupperware Love Affair”

  1. Boy, I know what you’re dealing with. I used to have the same kind of “Jones” for an old cheese shredder in my kitchen drawer. A few weeks after the one my mom donated to me when I got my first apartment took it’s final dirt nap (after a tough battle with a brick of hard Gouda) I ended up having to replace it with a knock-off Wal-Mart slicer. Suddenly homemade tacos and re-heated chili didn’t have the same texture, much less culinary quality. Truth be told, I felt the same way after I accidentally dropped my AQUAMAN coffee mug and was forced to consume my morning intake of java from cup with an image of Ronald McDonald on its side.

    In the end, caffeine from a clown didn’t give me the same kick I got from my old Superhero In Seaweed container.

    Don’t ‘ya hate it when that happens? Well. don’t ‘ya??

  2. Gee…..reading your post got me to thinking about that bowl. I feel buried sometimes with all the tupperware I have around here. Anyway, I knew I had a one of those large bowls tucked away somewhere so I went looking and there it was……tucked in the back of a cabinet, sitting there since the day I got it. I had in my mind it was green but it is the mustard colored one. I have some other brand new pieces too I guess they are “vintage” now 🙂 Guess I should be putting them in one of my internet stores so they can find a new home and I can get some bills paid.

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