A story of two friends and some glass

Once upon a time, there was a glass­worker named Gwa­cie. Gwa­cie liked to try dif­fer­ent things with glass, and to fund her habits (and pay her bills) she often tried to sell these dif­fer­ent glass things. One day Gwa­cie listed sev­eral unusual lit­tle can­dle stand items for sale on an e-​marketplace called Etsy. She was very happy (traalaalaaa).

Gwa­cie had also posted pic­tures of her can­dle stands at her favorite forum, The Glass Haven. Her friend Frost­fire saw the pic­tures and said “Oh! Oh! These are beau­ti­mous! I must have one for myself!” So Frost­fire waited and waited, and as soon as she saw her favorite can­dle stand in Gwacie’s Etsy store, she POUNCED on it and pur­chased it. Gwa­cie was even hap­pier (Laadaatralaa!!).

When she was pack­ing up the can­dle stand for her friend, Gwa­cie noticed that some of the fused glass seemed a lit­tle too sharp. “I can’t send this to another glass per­son, for by these errors they will know all my inner flaws, weak­nesses and per­sonal short com­ings when they see this piece. ” she thought. “No prob­lem, I will just pop it back into the kiln and soften those parts up a bit.” And so she did.

“CRACK!” went the kiln. “What was that?” won­dered Gwa­cie. The piece had cracked in half! Tsk tsk, stu­pid Gwa­cie. Why must she always doubt her work and allow her ego to run her actions? Gwa­cie wor­ried. Should she just tell her friend? She had an idea. “I will make another one, a BETTER one” she thought. And so she did. “CRACK!” went the kiln again. “Good grief, ” thought Gwa­cie “this could make a girl say bad words.” She tried again, this time with success.

But though it was very nice, this new can­dle stand, in the same col­ors and the same pat­terns as the first, it was not the same. Gwa­cie knew she would have to tell her friend of her fool­ish­ness after all. “But what shall I do with these cracked pieces?” she won­dered. Then Gwa­cie had another idea. “I will make a sur­prise for my friend and I will send it with her new can­dle stand.” she thought. “Per­haps she will be so pleased by this extra sur­prise that she will not mind too much that her can­dle stand is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from the one that she orig­i­nally ordered!”

Gwa­cie excit­edly worked and worked on this idea for the cracked pieces and she even­tu­ally fin­ished, but it was now one day later than her planned ship­ping date. Gwa­cie knew, that once again, she would have to con­fess her mis­take and tell her friend that she was tardy on the pack­age ship­ping. Poor Gwa­cie just kept fac­ing one self-​created trial after another.

After much bub­ble wrap­ping and tap­ing and padding, Gwa­cie loaded the box and weighed it. “Oh my gosh” she thought, “I can send this for less than I charged in my list­ing!” She felt her face going red. “I will sim­ply have to refund some money to my friend and explain the dif­fer­ence in ship­ping.” Would the list of needed expla­na­tions to her friend ever end? How many mis­takes would poor Gwa­cie have to tell her good glass friend that she made? “Oh dear” she thought, “surely my friend will see me for the true fool I really am now. I shall make elab­o­rate plans to move to the Nether­lands and take up a quiet life of goat milk­ing. It’s the only way my frag­ile ego will sur­vive this disaster.”

(to be continued…)