was in a good old-fashioned variety store when I found a mysterious object displayed on a dusty shelf between saguaro-shaped pens and keychains of resin-entombed beetles: A palm-sized terra-cotta disk with a turtle shape stamped on one side. Its simple label read (typos fixed):
A small item
of outrageous optimism
Written and illustrated by Heather Hopp-Bruce
I
“Is this really a thing?” I asked my companion, who had not heard of such sugar-softening magic, let alone such a guarantee. I turned it over in my hand and read the back label, which provided instructions (soak the disk in water, then just plop it into the sugar jar) and reiterated the guarantee. That part wasn’t a typo, then: Two thousand years! What outrageous casual optimism!
The terra-cotta disk has the potential to be passed down generations upon generations until one day a distant descendant might pull it out of a bag of crusted hard brown sugar and exclaim, “The sugar softener no longer works! We must return it to the manufacturer!” then realize in horror that the year is 4026, one year past the guarantee date, and in shock drop it to the floor where it breaks in three pieces on the kitchen floor. Or maybe there are no kitchens left, just
lush forests dotted with still-smooth granite countertops, and the family has lit a lovely
dinner fire atop one to make tea. Their bag of
nicely softened sugar sits nearby, the little sugar saver, in this timeline, inside performing well past its expiration date.
Unless the world has forked into another direction, and the sugar saver has been passed down to a young person on an interstellar gap-year journey with friends when the disk stops working and their sugar inconveniently hardens.
Or maybe by then the disk will be disintegrated into dust, its particles scattered by hot winds across a vast coastal desert. Who can predict?
Two thousand years in the past Jesus was in his 20s; could he have even imagined our airplanes, our vast selection of canned carbonated beverages, our politics of intolerance and hatred (actually, sadly yes on that last one). And even further back: Consider the humble Opabinia of the middle Cambrian era. It had a single proboscis, five eyes each on a stalk, and a reticulated body. Time has swept it away, and that’s OK, too. The daily concerns of both Jesus and the Opabinia have long since been assuaged, their contemporary allies and antagonists also long since gone.
But in 2025 I have this small absurdly guaranteed object that I will carry as a reminder that the arc of history is long and we are lucky to be here for but a moment of it with family and pets and all the unexpected joys life brings. Constant use will also likely result in breaking it, and that’s OK, too. I’ll still have the rock collection for space-faring descendants to enjoy.
I bought the terra-cotta disk — at $3.49 it was an absolute steal for a family heirloom. The idea that the mysterious but inevitable constant of time will continue to plod along and add up so dramatically while this little disk just keeps softening sugar is tremendously comforting. Sure, I have plenty of beloved rocks for my children to inherit, rocks that are more likely to actually last eons. But can they soften sugar? No, they cannot.
Heather Hopp-Bruce is director of visual strategy for Globe Opinion. She can be reached at
heather.hopp-bruce@globe.com.
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