I had two of these and two bowls of the same material, given to me in 1996 by Deborah when I lived on Hopkins Street in San Marcos. I only have one of the bowls remaining now.* Before I found this plate broken like this while I was washing dishes in the kitchen sink today, it had acquired a small chip along the rim that caused it to spark in the microwave, making me think at first my microwave had gone bad. But I figured out what the problem was before I replaced the 9 year old microwave, not pictured here. The plate is sitting on a GE toaster oven. I'm standing on the counter next to the sink. There is a large chipped off part of the formica in the counter visible, not my doing. It was there when I moved in.
The other blue plate I had was actually warped slightly. When my friend Pat Calkins visited me in Austin in the spring of 1998, we used the blue plates and he commented on the warped one. I said, "yeh, they're from Walmart," but he liked the artistic nature of the warped plate. This is one reason we were friends: he was thoughtful about stuff like that. The photo of Pat and me I posted after he died in 2016 is from his visit in 1998. He lived in Fayetteville, AR at the time. He would have been interested in the way this blue plate broke cleanly into three pieces with the center part having a little protrusion, which actually should be pointed toward the bottom of the photo where one of the breaks occurred.
*24 July 2018 update: the blue bowl got broken today when I dropped it while washing dishes. Shattered in many pieces.
