Blue Glass

At first I planned to create a fiction story about my experience (maybe later on I will) — but then I realized, even as hard as it is to admit to my strangeness — it might do someone, somewhere, some good in knowing…

As a child I had a bunch of little quirks that made me an oddball, that isn’t to say that I don’t still sport some quirks, but I understand them a bit more and am able to manage them better. One strange thing that I had going on as a kid was a fascination with blue glass bottles.

There was a time that medication such as Vicks VapoRub and Milk of Magnesia came in actual blue glass bottles and I’d collect them. Believe it or not, I found the blue color of the bottles, coupled with the coolness of the glass as a calming device to my otherwise overly active mania.

Even stranger is the belief I held about those glass containers. I would breathe into them after I had completely scrubbed and cleaned them, thinking that I was transferring a bit of my spirit into them, before putting the lid back on them.

Over the years I had well over 125 different bottles, from the giant Vicks containers to the even bigger M.O.M. ones. I had them all neatly lines up in both the garage and in my bedroom that I shared with Adam, until I was 16-years-old.

One sunny summer day, following a long weekend of traveling for two different track meets in Oregon, I came home to find my collection gone. Mom had grown tired of it, claiming they were a waste of time, and had Pa Sanders take them to the dump.

It took me several days, if not a couple of weeks to get over this and the unwarranted fear that I was going to die because my trapped spirit was tossed out with them. Every time I see a blue-bottle, now days, whether it be plastic or actual glass, I recall those extreme days of summer and then laugh at my silliness.

Back then no one really had an understanding of manic-depression – of which I was more manic than depressed. Had anyone realized I was in such a state, they’d probably would have lobotomized me or something.

As a side note in 2016, The National Center for Biotechnology Information published a paper on the positive effects of Blue‐blocking glasses as additive treatment for mania. Such things leave me to wonder if I was onto something back then and had no idea.