Anthropomorphizing is bad for you

So the husband and I were at lunch yesterday eating our sandwiches and we got to talking about how easy it is to get an emotional attachment to anything.  He and I both have a very strong anthropomorphic sense – we apply human emotions to every damn thing.  I mean everything.  

We can’t throw things away – we have learned not to buy anything because when we do we keep it forever because if we can’t give it to Goodwill then we sure as hell can’t just send it to the dump because that would be cruel.  And we can’t give anything with eyes away even to the Goodwill, because we’re pretty convinced some film student is just going to round it and a whole bunch of other eye-bearing items up as part of some piece on the destruction of all that is wholesome and good, and our poor things with eyes will get tortured to death.  We have ants crawling around on our kitchen counters and as long as they’re not getting into what meager supplies of food we have lying around the house they’re welcome to stay (come to think of it, I’m not sure the landlord would be happy with this decision).  Most importantly we have Domo, our travel buddy, to whom I am sure I’ll be introducing you soon.  He and his two buddies, the dudes, are a veritable folie à deux of anthropomorphic mania.

And I don’t know why husband felt the need to reinforce just how pathetically love-struck I am with all things inanimate, but yesterday to prove some sort of point he reached into the paper bag his sandwich came in and poked arm holes in it and called it ‘Baggy’.  And I warned him Baggy was just going to end up living on our couch like Domo and the dudes if husband wasn’t careful, because frankly Baggy was really kind of cute.  He had a band of blue ink on his ‘face’ that looked like old-model cylon eyes and he had grease stains all over like a Dalmatian and stapled-on receipts which were apparently his only concession to decent attire, and seriously I felt quite bad having to go put him in the trash at the end of the meal.  Not even recycled.  It was horrible.

Anthropomorphizing is clearly very bad for you.  But it can make you a better person.  I have no doubt in my mind that the crazier I get about this the more empathic and eco-conscious I get overall.  And that’s got to be a good thing, right?