I have great love for other people's written words. Their grocery lists, their to do lists, their letters...especially their letters. No, I wouldn't read your letters or notes in your house, maybe your grocery list on your fridge, definitely your grocery list on the fridge, or whatever you have posted on your fridge, but not your letters...unless you lost them...And I found them...in a parking lot...in the grocery store on the floor...laying amongst the apples...perched on the tofu. If I found your list, or your letter, or your report card I would read it and save it...put it in my big book of other people's notes. Sometimes when I'm grocery shopping I will spy a particularly wonderful grocery list perched atop someone's purse in a shopping cart. Perhaps it has been printed from a computer grocery list template, all very organized. Maybe it is a page covered in teeny tiny handwriting. It is so hard for me to pass it by. I look at it longingly, try to read it as I pass by...hoping it will float to the floor and not be missed...
Most of my friends and family know I collect these bits of other people's lives. My sweet mama sends me envelopes full of grocery lists she has collected from the aisles of Kroger: Lists written in half Spanish half English, lists on personalized list stationery...lists on post it notes. My daughter used to bring me some pretty funny ones that she had found in the halls of her high school. These weren't grocery lists, but notes passed in class. Hilarious notes passed in class. LAst week I received from my friend Andros, the sweetest letter. A real love letter. No, Andros didn't write it to me...he found it in a parking lot. It was a real gem. I think it's my favorite ever, though deciding on an actual favorite is hard.
I had a hard time deciding if I should really post it here, but, it is so sweet I have to share. If this happens to be your letter, drop me a note...I'll get it back to you. Otherwise, I'll add it to my book. All I know is that Andrea has a pretty sweet boyfriend..or girlfriend.
I really hope you can decipher this. I don't know how to make it larger so you can see it easier.
Home Depot customer is just so nice.
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| there one goes...getting swept up. |
I love this one!!! I have a few lists for you right now as a matter of fact. I will save them til you get back. I am just like you, I see nice big lists on people's baskets and wish they would fall on the floor. It's hard not to just snatch them! This is your mother, by the way.
ReplyDeleteI think my favorite list is the one with "grits" written a lot bigger than the other things and underlined several times. Don't forget the the GRITS!! I love you!
I still find lists at OU, I pick them up for you. I think I sent you one recently.
ReplyDeleteI have a very similar obsession. Mine is for forgotten objects, small abandoned trinkets. I wonder what stories they hold? How does a button feel about being lost? Does it feel the severance from its host like it was ripped away from home? Or are button's adventurous, always looking for a new bit of sidewalk or dusty flowerbed to call their own? What does a shinny stone have to say for itself? Is it's voice soft like the surface of its skin? Or deep and husky, like the churning of a gravel pit? I take them home and set them on my desk, they amass weekly in odd little piles; clustering together into new undefined categories. Together they say very strange things. Eventually I have to file them away in boxes and jars, but they fill the would-be empty corners of my room, making it just the place I want to be. And imagined stories of what they might say to me if I knew how to listen, fill the would-be corners of my heart... so that it's just the heart I want to have.
I found a yo-yo on the beach, it keeps moving around my room...I have a small box that I've designated as a home for my found things from Galveston...but the yo-yo is lonely right now. I think it was a birthday party favor yo-yo. Not of great quality, but of good color. Maybe a beach party birthday party? Maybe the yo-yo came to the beach as someone's new treasure...forgotten then among the sand and beach plants, its string tangled around brushy branches...a happy yo-yo to be left by the sea, free from the sticky fingers of a small boy or girl? or a sad yo-yo...forgotten by the sticky hands he waited so long to meet?
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