The Tupperware Years: Still Fresh

While we're discussing memories from my past, I have to explain my cabinets.
I have more Tupperware (specifically Modular Mates) than anyone I've ever met. How did I come upon all this expensive burping plastic, you ask? Believe it or not, I only paid for about 1/8 of the Tupperware I own. The rest of it was acquired through a ritual that's is familiar to anyone who's attended or hosted a Tupperware party: For every party you book, you get free Tupperware. Book more parties, sell more Tupperware, get more Tupperware!

Then if someone at your party books her (or his -- pffffft!) own party, you get even more free Tupperware. Of course you're then pretty much obliged to attend the party that was booked off yours -- which is where you'll spend a little bit of money in order to help drive your friend's sales up. Then, of course (you're getting this now, aren't you?), you book a party off the friend who booked off you... and from your next party's sales, you complete whatever little product line you're "working on." For me, obviously, it was Modular Mates for quite a while... but I also have leftover dishes, dinnerware and cups, liquid containers,"olive keepers," "cake takers," and even hollow roller pins that get filled with water (they're wonderful, actually).

Funny story: when Aleks (then Alex) was about 5, he had his first sleepover at a friend's house. When I picked him up the next morning, he was all excited -- not about the fort he and his friend made or about the ghost stories they told or about the play he and his friend performed. No, he was excited about CEREAL BOXES. As in the fact that they exist. "You can even read the story on the box while you eat your cereal!" Alex exclaimed.

I realized then that, just as I had grown up assuming all houses had sunporches and ballrooms (that's another post), my kids had grown up thinking that food was completely generic and always lived in Tupperware containers.

Then the media got a hold of them and nothing's been the same since.