The Paper and The Metal

In my pockets rides a full complement of United States currency and the documentation of the items for which the currency was exchanged. Always in the front pockets - I do not even understand why back pockets are sewn onto women’s pants. We neither pack a naked wallet nor a tin of Skoal. Only the front pockets are useful and in mine can always be found cash and trash. I qualify receipts as trash as I don’t save them for any productive use such as item returns or tax preparations. They are scrap paper to me and often serve that function when a notebook is not at hand.

Check any pair of pants, any coat or jacket and enough legal tender could be found to purchase the week’s groceries. The number of receipts, if recycled, would make a new ream of copier paper. Like roaches, they check in, but they don’t check out. At least until a great purge. These occur periodically. I remove from my pockets all items and find homes for the inhabitants. Receipts find themselves relocated to the very modern, stainless steel highrise called File 13. The money is either shoved into my bulging wallet or scraped from countertop directly into my purse. The implication here is that my wallet and my purse are as haphazardly provided with cash and trash as my pockets. This is correct. My wallet can scarcely be zipped due to its extensive girth. Filled with countless, crumpled one-dollar bills, plenteous pennies and receipts of every size and color. My purse is a non-organized pit into which many items are unceremoniously dumped during the course of a week. Chaos theory manages my purse, pocket and wallet organization, but it works for me.

However, there are no other objects that you could guarantee finding in my personal carry-ons. Nothing. No grooming object, no cream or lotion, no lucky charm or treasured keepsake, no bit of silliness…nothing. The only sureties are money and receipts. And they are most certainly sureties.

The question becomes “why?” It is not a random thing. I will go so far as to remove the wad of coins and paper from my pockets upon undressing, only to replace them when dressing the next morning. I have repeated this action for the same wadded handful of objects for an entire week, without ever spending any of the cash or purging any of the receipts. It is almost like a part of the dressing ritual. First layer of clothes, next layer, shoes, wad in pants pocket, off to brush the hair. I will wage Jihad against my wallet to zip it closed rather than remove some of its contents. My purse weighs more than me and the effort to find a desired object in the forest of receipts and litter-layers of papers and coins is Herculean.

These continuously toted objects do not necessarily enhance my day. But, I tote them nonetheless. I could organize them far more efficiently so that I could still keep them near and dear, but in a more efficient and useful manner. Ummm…no. I could. I don’t. I move through each day with pockets filled, wallet bursting, purse weighing down the right-side of my body producing an awkward gait. And no member of this item list is give any more priority than others. A $50.00 bill will be crammed into the pocket of a pair of jeans with as little thought as a nickel. And may stay there until happily rediscovered weeks later. I have no allegiance to the almighty dollar and, therefore, no respect for its representatives.

I think that is the root of the issue, in some ways. I have no respect for money. Not that I think money is evil, but I view it as a very commonplace thing. Something to do a job and nothing more. Receipts – the same. Purchases and objects are things to use and I do not even think about them come tax time. When an item is defective or inappropriate for my needs, I do try and return it. If I bought it, I bought it for a need and that need still exists unfulfilled. Often, I can find the receipt for the object by investigating all of my trousers and upending my purse onto the kitchen table. But, if the time of return falls subsequent to a Great Purge, the receipt will have been deposited in the landfill long ago. When I purge receipts, it is indiscriminate. They ALL go. I don’t pine, I don’t rant or rage. I accept it philosophically and either purchase again or do without.

I am also a pack rat. This is genetic. I do horde, although I have curbed this behavior greatly with my move into my new condo. This behavior modification has not extended to my cash and trash stash, however. I wonder if it represents a human version of Stray Cat Syndrome. Stray cats will gorge themselves when presented with food, as they are accustomed to going for extended periods without provisions. They don’t know when their next meal will arrive, so they eat all they can when it is available. Some grow out of this behavior once adopted, others don’t. I think I might be one of those that hasn’t.

For a period of my life, there was a cash drought of environmental disaster proportions. Living in a shabby apartment in a disreputable area of the town to which I had moved when I left my ex-husband, I was living on credit cards for bills, groceries and gasoline. My eye was fixed on a final divorce settlement that would clear the bills. Ultimately that was all I got, but that was enough. For day to day things, a bottle of soda, a cute bauble, a spontaneous trip to the theater, that one or two items that you forget during the week’s grocery trip…for that I had nothing. My pockets were so empty you could hear the whistle of the wind blowing through them. I had no ready cash. I had nothing for those little things that most people take for granted when out and about. How many days I went hungry, as I didn’t have a few dollars to stop and buy a salad? To try and remember to fill bottles of soda or water from home, as I wouldn’t have any money to buy them while at work or doing errands. My cash would be guarded like gold for the laundromat. That was the ultimate goal of my cash. Everything else was on plastic and I prayed each night that justice would at least raise me from this hole once my marriage bonds were severed.

The receipts? Proof, perhaps, that I am out of the hole. I can buy things. Not large things, that is not the point. These receipts are for bottles of soda, a pack of tissues, a bag of ice, a bell pepper and onion from the grocery. They represent the fact that I have pocket change. That is why a $50.00 and a $1.00 are inseparable in my mind. They both represent the same thing – something in my pocket. That is all that counts – something on my person. The freedom to buy a card for a friend on a whim. The ability to pay a toll if one unexpectedly arises during an out-and-about. To loan a kid a dollar to buy lunch when they are short. At any time I have ample proof to myself that I am out of the dark and cold hole in which an important part of my life was spent. I am not rich. I don’t have the ability to do and have everything I want. But, I feel like a “normal” person on the threshold of their 4th decade. It’s a pretty good feeling, I must say.