1969:
My best friend and I were perusing Seventeen Magazine in 1969, getting ready to be fashion plates for senior year. She made a list and was reading it off and she said, "I need a white sweater." And I stopped her and asked, "You NEED a white sweater? Like, you'll die if you don't get one?" And she said "Yes, "M___ (my last name), I NEED a white sweater."
2019:
Our stove just died. Our little 1995, 20-inch basic electric stove died. So I bought a new one. Instead of comparing features and determining what we "needed"--I bought the cheapest one. Unfortunately, it's messed up. For some reason, the ignition wires on the left are mapped to the burners on the right and vice versa. I was livid--that is a weird, unacceptable mess-up. DH, who is usually on these quality failures like stink on s**t is all of a sudden complacent. "We'll get used to the fact that you have to turn the left burner on to get the right one to heat up." he said encouragingly.
But it did make me reflect on what we no longer need. We need a stove that works. We don't need extra burner lights. We don't even need burners that match the picture on the dials. We don't need more clothes than fit in our small closets. We don't need more gardens than we can weed. We don't need duplicates of many things except toilet paper. We don't need an air conditioner, we've come to learn up here near Canada and with good working ceiling fans. We don't need more than 3 chairs, 2 beds, or 1 bathroom.
So what don't YOU need?