When I was an undergraduate student up north, I did a great many things. I double-majored, made a lot of good friends, and weathered the cold winters (even a blizzard in May). Most of the things I did there didn’t come down south with me. Friends are largely still in the north and my degrees aren’t really physical mementos of my time up there. The one thing that I do have is a wine rack.
I found myself in a theatre design course copying a written explanation and a couple of sections on two-dimensional paper into a CAD program. We could choose any object we liked… the catch was that we’d have to build it. Since I’d have to actually construct (and keep) the thing that I built, I decided to build a wine cabinet. It was a three-part piece. Legs, twelve slots for holding bottles, and a top that would hold glasses inserted upside down. All of it was to be built out of wood. I did the entire thing on a table saw (something that I now realize is impressive with the many small and intricate cuts — as there are no screws or nails holding it together). When it was finished it was beautiful. We proudly display it in our home.
The trouble, of course, is that it is low to the ground. Because our son is a curious one, we tend to place a chair in front of it to discourage him from pulling out glasses or bottles. Recently, however, he got the best of us. He moved the chair, pulled out a bottle of wine, realized it was too heavy, dropped it and promptly began crying because he was scared. Luckily, he stood absolutely still and was entirely unharmed. If only I’d thought of building a baby-proof wine rack while I was an undergrad. Oh well.