RAIDERS OF THE LOST TOELESS SQUIRREL

What is an artifact?

"A cultural artifact is an man-made object which gives information about the culture of its creator and users. The artifact may change over time in what it represents, how it appears and how and why it is used as the culture changes over time." Thank you Wikipedi.

A tradition that has blossomed in the circle of friends I share, is that of the artifact. I will speak about the specifics of this in a moment. We have taken some mundane, albeit weird items, and turned them into artifacts. This one tradition has really raised the bar on the social group as a whole because it has allowed us to capture the art of storytelling and the passing along of historical events for us as a group.

Many groups of friends reminence on the past, as we do, in social gatherings at different times. What really started out as a joke has raised the bar on this event and given it a life of its own.

It all started with the Ass-Tray. Now many groups do gag gifts for Christmas and our group does the same, but about 3 years ago Little Scott, gave as a gift a ash-tray that was formed out of the cloven hoove of a animal. That then became the tradition to pass the Ass-Tray to another guy-nite member each year. Then we come to the toeless squirrel. A stuffed animal that consitantly loses a toe each year(now we break off a toe during the party).

This year we did 2 things, we added one more artifact to the growing list, and a new tradition. The Duck of Doom, a mounted duck with some omen of disaster attached to it. We also added the rule that whomever has an artifact must add a story to it and improve it in some way before the next years gathering.

I shared all this to just say this simple item.


Stories are the best way of resharing important and fun events in your life and I think the best thing we did as a group was add these artifacts to continue to grow and evolve our group of friends.


Dont you wish your friends had an Ass-Tray?


Safe Hunting