If there was a part of myself that I could light ablaze with a flamethrower like it’s the monster from The Thing, it would be my dripping sentimentality. I’m the type of person who will hesitate for a moment to throw out obvious trash because it reminds me of a past time or a person. I’m one crisis away from being on Hoarders. Sometimes, though, I do appreciate this impulse. In the right circumstance it’s nice to have nostalgia, and it’s nice to have things that remind you of past times in your life. The following receipts are an example of that. They’re a reminder that I did, in fact, appreciate these moments at the time enough to hold onto something. I knew there was electricity in the air at these places, and that they were ripe to be remembered as ‘the good times.’ These were indeed great times, long past.
Amato’s
The first thing you notice on this are the left aligned letters labeled “The Nucleus” in large font that appears nowhere else on the receipt. The fact that we ordered a pizza was unusual. We couldn’t afford to be doing this all the time as broke high school students, so instead we’d order one large fry ($2.74) and camp out at a table bantering with ourselves and the staff for hours. The manager, Hank, would even provide free sodas. This was our routine on a daily basis, zipping over from our high school after either a theatre rehearsal or a speech team practice.
The Nucleus was as dumb as it sounds, but I would argue in an endearing way. At best, it was a tool to provide exclusivity. We’re in, and you’re not. There were absolutely no benefits of being ‘in’ other than being ‘in’. It was pure vanity, like those wannabe influencer brands selling $120 sweatshirts, only it didn’t occur to us to make garments. While most teenagers our age were doing their homework, or drinking, or getting laid, we were taking jabs at each other. Trying to win the attention of the group with a sharp comment of witty joke, often failing. Fundamentally doing nothing of importance, and all the beauty that entails.
As you get past the initial chaos of adulthood, you’ll have the awkward perspective of looking back on a substantial amount of time. Not just last year, or two years ago, but ten or fifteen. And, hopefully, you’ll get to see substantial change in yourself that manifested itself over hundreds of individual decisions on individual days. A friend of mine once described me as changing for the better ‘at the last socially acceptable moment’. Looking back at the folks in the Nucleus who I would sit around and rattle off jokes with for hours, I see the flaws and complexity of any high schoolers. I see myself in those too. You can’t help but compare everyone to who they are now and track the highs and lows of more than a decade not bumming around in the strip mall pizzeria. We’re all more mature – at varying lengths – and more experienced. One thing that also happens when you reach my age is that you see that your growth and others’ can drive in different directions. In theory this is natural and good, but in practice it makes looking at a crumbled receipt from 2015 feel like looking at an ancient artifact asking — Did that really happen? Was that a fever dream? I’m glad it wasn’t.
Uncle Bub’s
Even as late as 2019, when I was 22, I was more insulated from higher order family dynamics that I’m aware of now. The undertones I thankfully was not privy to growing up or even as a young adult. Now my grandfather who I would eat ribs with at Uncle Bub’s is gone, and for better or worse I am no longer ignorant. I know much more about his complexity, and in some ways of my own. That dripping nostalgia I mentioned earlier wants to try to frame this receipt as some symbol of my innocence, but I was fully a college graduated adult by this point, and this is a crumpled piece of paper. I was raised by a journalist to know wholeheartedly that knowing is good, that being aware of more is better than not. But I do envy something about Colin on 12/30/2019 at 11:56 AM. Maybe that’s just sentimentality.
The Junction
In general, I can’t stand ceremonies. I’ve always felt that we as humans should just go and get things done, while letting the results speak for themselves. Actually — let’s be honest — I’m one to speak of my results a little too much, but I don’t need a dinner, or a speech, or a pointy hat to tell me I did well. I suppose it’s good that I’m in sales then, the celebrations are typically brief and then it’s on to the next quarter. The one good thing about ceremonies, particularly ceremonies that end things, is that they signify to everyone the completion of an era. The beginning of something new. The weeks leading up to my graduation from Indiana were an emotional and heartfelt time. Lots of goodbyes, lots of crying, all based on the knowledge that this is the end, and things would never quite be the same. I only really appreciated how important the ceremony of it was when COVID hit, and I didn’t have any warning before my life as it was ended.
My roommate and I used to go to a bar in South Boston called The Junction every Wednesday because they had a deal for 50 cent wings – and we were both frugal (broke) and loved wings. We did this from when we moved in during the summer of 2019 all the way up to the following March. One random Wednesday, we sat down at our normal table and ordered wings. This was an exciting day, because Trump was giving an oval office speech about COVID. You must understand, at this moment, COVID was basically a foreign policy issue. Sure, you heard that someone in your city had just flown back from Shenzhen and tested positive, but it still seemed a world away. Our interest was not in the human condition, but rather how Trumps speech would effect markets. We were gamblers. Absolute degenerates who gambled on stock derivatives in our free time. We were doing this long before r/Wallstreetbets made this kind of thing a parody of itself. We had both bet that COVID was going to be bad and Trumps speech was going to validate that – although we didn’t know what he would actually say. As we waited, I popped open Twitter and saw that Tom Hanks was number 1 trending. It struck me as very odd. The president was about to address the nation from the oval office about a viral disease and Mr. Gump is #1? Moments later, I knew why – he had tested positive. For a brief time, we discussed it before Tom too was usurped by #NBA. At the same time, the NBA had suspended its season. The video of Mark Cuban reacting on the sideline was being passed around.
The speech was now approaching, so my roommate and I pulled out our phones again. I set mine to market futures while my roommate pulled up the speech. The speech itself was brief, Trump meandered a little bit, and then dropped the bomb — Flights to and from Europe were to be suspended. Before I could even snap my eyes to my phone it updated the futures: -5.00%. This is a scary number, as this is as low as they can go. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were watching the futures for the next day, which would become Black Thursday. As Trump wrapped up his speech we sat silently. I could hear other people at the bar murmuring about COVID. It was in the air in more ways than one. Then, our wings arrived.
3 days later I flew to Chicago to ride it out with my family. My roommate went back to Philly. The Junction, the first bar I went to where they knew my name, closed the following week and never reopened. My roommate never came back to Boston. He wasn’t the only one, of the closest friends I had at the time in Boston at that time hardly any remain. They moved during the early stages of COVID. While the heights of the era to follow would be higher, the transition was a very lonely time, mirroring the loneliness I had when I first moved to Boston less than a year previous. But when I first moved here I knew that change was happening. I had ceremony, and I had celebration. I had proper goodbyes and sendoffs to those I loved. This one was abrupt. My life as it was ended, and a new one began. Part of me still resents that, but mostly I’m just more appreciative of what I have. Because it can truly end at any time, for any reason. I miss those wings a lot.
Colin