2004-07-26 - 10:10 a.m.
Some things I found in my wallet:
A receipt from Restaurant Toque in Montreal, dated 2001/05/26. I paid $169.00 on my Visa. I don�t really remember this meal, but I remember that trip to Montreal pretty well. Montreal is Alithea�s favorite city.
Once, I planned a surprise vacation. �Hey, I got us tickets! Guess where we�re going!�
Her eyes lit up, �Montreal?�
�Uhm, no. Paris.�
�Oh. That�s nice too.�
We went jogging by the river one morning; it was the last time I remember running.
A receipt from Bricco in the North End, dated OCT02�01 9:36PM. Mariko was our server at table 115/1. I paid $80.50 on my Visa. I�m afraid I don�t remember this, although Bricco was probably my favorite restaurant in the neighborhood.
Two ticket stubs dated April 10, 2003 at the Meehan Auditorium, $15 general/$12 Brown students. This was the spring concert. The part listing the guests is torn off, but it was Luna, the Donnas, and Joan Jett. I ran into Brett in the hall before the show. She said she was glad to see someone she knew at Brown; what was I doing here? We talked for a bit and they dedicated a song to me during their set. Made my month. I think I�ll keep this.
An ATM (or �bankjegy-automata�) slip dated 2001/01/28. I withdrew 25,000 forints. Budapest was the most romantically beautiful city I�ve ever seen. �Please, keep your receipt!�
A handwritten receipt for a $10 co-pay dated 7/24/01. I saw Dr. Rentz. No idea.
A receipt from Harvard Square Eye Care from 09/11/01. My glasses cost $310.
Wait a second. That date. I remember being at Alithea�s dorm that morning and watching it on the TV in their common room. You could see the Towers out the window in my high school. When I was upset, I�d go down to the promenade and look at the skyline. I think the solidity made me feel better.
I know there are some people who can�t watch the footage of the collapse, but I couldn�t watch it enough. It was the most amazing thing I�ve ever seen. Probably (hopefully) the most amazing thing I ever will see.
�KABLOOM � the power of fresh flowers�. There was one on my corner. I bought a Celebration bouquet at noon on August 5, 2001.
A receipt from the Algiers Coffee House in Harvard Square from 9/18/01 for $32.26. Kind of a lot for coffee.
A receipt from Club Monaco in Montreal. I bought �pantalons� for $67.86. Canadian, I assume. They hemmed them on site, pretty cool. I still have these, although they have a hole now.
A stub from an exhibit at an unspecified German gallery (I think it was in Berlin). Friedensreich Hundertwasser: Kunst & Architektur. It was awesome. I really want a print of �The Rain Falls Far from Us�. I wrote a paper about this, but may I quote the opening of Blade Runner:
Holden: �1187 Hundertwasser.�
Leon: �That�s the hotel.�
Holden: �What?�
Leon: �Where I live.�
A receipt for our bed & breakfast in Montreal. I forget the proprietress� name. She was such an annoying busybody, always materializing when you came home and hooting �Helloooo?�
A receipt from Bistro Rock D�tente, also in Montreal. This place was so cool. Alithea was feeling bad and insisted I go out alone. I found this place and they were having a tenth anniversary party. All these Quebecois rockers were getting up on stage and singing covers. I went back and dragged Alithea here. I think it cheered her up.
A receipt from the Rainbow Grill at Rockefeller Center. Ugh. Restaurants are rarely any better than they have to be and this place rested on its great view. Susan and I took Mom there for Mothers Day, May 13, 2001. It was way too much - $297.69. Susan left the tip in cash. I remember the waiter chasing me down because he saw the receipt and thought we�d stiffed him. If only. I think Mom liked it, though.
A scrap of paper with Kim Evert�s phone numbers. She was my old neighbor in the North End, a flight attendant (Delta maybe?) and the younger cousin of tennis star Chris Evert. She was really nice. I never got why a young woman plucked her eyebrows and penciled lines in, though.
A receipt from John Harvard�s Brew House for $36 dated January 26, 2002. This was the day I took the SAT again. I thought I�d be applying to Columbia�s General Studies program for older students (I didn�t in the end). If your standardized test scores were older than eight years, you had to take some proprietary Columbia test. I didn�t want to take their goddamn test, so I put a baseball cap on to cover the bald spot and went to a local high school (Rindge) to take the SAT.
I forgot how bureaucratically insulting high school can be. Room assignments were posted on a wall alphabetically _by proctor�s name_, resulting in a frantically neck-craning crowd of kids absorbing a powerful lesson that pointless officiousness really sucks.
In the middle of the math section, I had to resist the urge to stand on a desk and shout �You will never use this in the future! Determining congruent triangles is not a part of real life! I am reaching back to tenth grade math class to remember most of this!� It is also not bragging to note that not only did I get an 800 on the verbal section, but my extended score report noted that I got every question right (you can get 4 or 5 wrong and still get an 800). It�s not bragging because this isn�t a test designed for 27-year olds. Of course I have a bigger vocabulary than a high school kid. I�ve been reading for a decade more than them. (Of course, I suppose there are people who�ve just sat on their ass and watched TV since high school, but not being one of them isn�t really worth taking much pride in�)
Anyway, a thought that kept me going through the test was: �When this is over, I�m going to a bar to get drunk. That is my right as a citizen over the age of 21.� So while my test-mates were calling their folks for rides home, I went to John Harvard�s and drank. I think Alithea met me there. I know it was all a strange thing to do, but I hope she was proud of me.
� 2004 Geoff Gladstone
Sign My Guestbook!
powered by SignMyGuestbook.com
�
