On my 40th birthday my younger sister gave me a coffee mug with a picture on it of a mouse singing, “Hi Ho … Hi Ho … It’s over the hill I go.” It immediately became my favorite mug I was never going to use. I was going to keep it in pristine condition so I could give it back to her on her 40th birthday. But I almost didn’t get the chance.
When I went to retrieve it after eight long years in storage I found the handle of the mug had snapped off. Now it was time to see if all those Crazy Glue commercials were telling the truth.
I repaired the mug, wrapped it up, and was able to re-gift as well as re-joke. But … if someone had taken a sledge hammer to the mug and reduced it to a fine white powder, no amount of Crazy Glue would help. There would be no doubt that it was irrevocably broken, smashed to bits, and it would take some sort of deranged magical thinking to think that it even could be fixed.