This receipt is from Arch’s, a frozen yogurt store in Charlottesville, Virginia, a healthy walk away from the Tuttle Dorm of the UVA campus. I spent a total of eleven stinky, hot, humid, badly-catered weeks of my life in Tuttle, the basecamp of the University of Virginia Young Writers’ Workshop. The first year my roommate Stephanie woke up every morning to Hanson, and it’s her fault that I now know all the words to all their songs. My second and third years my roommate was Emma; we were in a suite together my first year and bonded over a love of Veronica Mars, Kristen Bell, and young adult fantasy novels. My fourth and final year I was in a triple with Gwen and Andrea, two girls I had never met before. That year I walked with several of my suitemates to the UVA bookstore at ten in the morning on a Saturday to get Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the day it was released. We read it separately, first in the Starbucks on the corner and then in our rooms, so we wouldn’t spoil it for each other, and yes – I cried.
This receipt is from my last year, this past summer, when our suite counselor Daphne took us to Arch’s one evening. It was about ninety degrees, humid as a sauna, and our path took us right by the fabled Lawn (capital L). On the way back, licking the fro yo from our fingers, we took our shoes off and ran down the terraced, grassy slopes, gaining a momentum I still haven’t lost.
This is the ticket to my high school’s prom for the 2005-2006 school year – my junior year. What I remember best about that year’s prom was getting there. Sarah, Sarah’s date, Gina, and I went in Sarah’s family’s light blue minivan, alias “Sexy.” Sarah, Gina, and I were driving from Gina’s to Sarah’s to intercept Sarah’s date only to discover at a red light that he was in the car behind us. In an instance of teenage daring and stupidity, he lunged out of his car and into Sexy just as the light turned; Sarah, driving in her full prom regalia of a deliciously ironic pink strapless dress, gunned it.
Every year at the HB Woodlawn Secondary Program prom, the DJ – always an HB alum – plays “Bohemian Rhapsody,” by Queen. Typically at this point all the HB students gather in a circle, swaying and singing along until the guitar solo, which is when the invisible air guitars appear. Seniors typically step forward for the operatic section, and of course, the inevitable headbanging begins as the confused guests and dates from other schools filter off the dance floor to wonder how they lasted so long without realizing they were surrounded by crazy people.
This receipt is from a Giant on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia. Apparently, I purchased a starfruit, a six pack of Red Bull, a jumbo bag of marshmallows, and Pokemon cards. This was Labor Day evening, the night of the senior lock-in, which was less of a lock-in and more of a countywide scavenger hunt.
On the list of targets were:
- a starfruit
- cell phone pictures of a team member chugging a six pack of Red Bull
- holographic Charizard, Bulbasaur, or Blastoise cards
- five “Keep Kids Alive, Drive 25” signs
- the ‘L’ from an “Arlington County Public Library” sign
- and traffic cones.
My team’s traffic cone was taken from a gas station somewhere on Columbia Pike, but for the rest of the details I plead the Fifth.
At two o’clock that morning, Arlington County police asked us kindly to stay inside the school until the curfew for under-eighteen drivers ended, so at four o’clock all of HB Woodlawn’s eighty graduating seniors went to the house of our principal, Frank. We festooned it with toilet paper and sang “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to him until he relented and let us in for Krispy Kreme donuts.
This receipt is from the Home Goods store at the Cross County Mall, from the first time I ventured into Yonkers. I had discovered that college means no longer getting to mooch off your parents’ diningware and found myself bereft of anything other than hastily acquired Bates silverware and a collection of paper plates accumulated from a week’s worth of double-plating my pizza slices from the Pub. The downside of that plan was pizza from the Pub. The day I got this receipt is the same day I discovered that while parents of children under the age of five always have nonbreakable, microwave-safe, easily-washable plates and bowls, they must spontaneously appear out of thin air upon the child’s conception because it is a secret reserved for them and not us lesser mortals and college students.
Instead, I now own two heavy blue-gray stoneware dishes – one plate, one bowl. Despite my initial unease with them, I find they actually afford me quite a bit of entertainment. Every time I make myself some ramen and transfer it to the bowl, I find myself carrying it back to my desk with all the care and attention one might give to a delicately unstable nuclear reactor because I have no need to find out exactly what noise stoneware makes against my foot. Each time I cut microwave pizza into slices on my plate, I find myself wondering: what the hell is stoneware, anyway? It doesn’t look like stone, or feel like stone – although I suppose the way it instantly saps all heat out of whatever I put on it is a point in favor of its “rockiness.” However, the receipt I have does say “stoneware,” and I suppose I have to trust it.
One might assume that these receipts are really just metaphors for the memories and experiences they represent – that when I keep these receipts and ticket stubs what I’m keeping are not the physical objects, as much as I’m cherishing the recollection of what they mean to me.
But really, I just suck at cleaning out my purse.
This piece was first read as a part of Sadie Lou’s Student and Alumnae/i Collaborative Reading.