The Map of Your Life.

They say that smell triggers the memory the best of any stimulation. I can think of a few memorable smells, but nothing reminds me more of very specific memories than sorting receipts. I remember the period in time, the group of friends I was hanging around at the time, so many different memories and emotions are brought up when sorting receipts. Like the time a friend and I went to the mall (a big thing to do when you live two hours away from the closest one) and were so crazy about Metal Gear Solid 2 that we each picked up a Solid Snake action figure from Software Etc... That's right Software Etc. not Gamestop. There was also the time that another friend and I went to Norde's Games and each bought a box of Magic the Gathering cards and took them back to his place and just tore through them, reading cards, rummaging through each other's spoils, being a bit disappointed by the condition of the brand new cards because a third of them were misaligned to the point to where you could nearly see the name of the next card on some of them.

With every bag of miscellaneous old receipts come the check stubs as well. I was able to piece together a comprehensive history of my grossly underpaid days at Pizza Hut. I was able to easily map my employment history through looking at my check stubs, even though I still don't know what happened to the ones from my days at Blockbuster. I even found my very first pay check, which totaled eight dollars and seventy cents. $8.70! For a person just starting out in the work force, that's a huge blow to the morale, having worked a week before receiving the paycheck, I remember muttering to the person next to me that I should just quit if the pay is gonna be like that. Then there are the random bits of memories that make their way into the bag as well. Such as a part of a label from an art piece that was submitted to the club I used to be a part of, a scribble on this receipt, a calculation on another, a warning of violation a friend I worked with wrote against me in jest that threatened to have my hands severed off as punishment.

To sort through receipts is really a sort of map of what a person's life is like. I will usually pick a receipt up off of the ground just to see what a person bought. They're never profound purchases though; gum, a bag of combos, a soft drink... I suppose that, in itself, shows something about the people who throw their receipts on the ground. The discarded receipts show me that they're horrible people for littering the ground and that they only throw down the small stuff. I'll probably never see a receipt for a 46" LCD Television lying on the ground. Maybe they feel that they're doing a service to the curious folks like me by doing it. I could live without it.

Seeing this history in a bag shows me how frivolous I seem to have been with my money. What if I hadn't bought that speaker system for my car that my neighbor helped me install or that collection of Magic the Gathering cards that I played regularly with a group of friends in college? Maybe I would be richer, but I wouldn't have all the memories.