I used to have this
wallet full of
cards, receipts, and papers of all kind -- plastic out the
yin yang.
Credit card,
driver’s license,
student ID, security door ID, insurance cards, gym cards –- Inside my wallet, something sinister had been growing. A plastic monument to the groceries I would buy, the money I owed, the memberships I possessed, and the things that run my life. My man-made life in a nutshell; my man-made life in my
billfold.
My life started being a pain in the arse. Often times it would set my bum askew as I sat on a park bench or sat quietly during class lecture. Once upon a calm summer morning, I decided to take all my cards out and look at them. I wanted to take one grand look at the things I had collected that comprise my existence in our society. One by one I pulled the plastic plates of armor out. Some went easy -- without a struggle. Others resisted as if in retribution for the lack of attention they had received over the ages. I lay them rest in my hot little hand, I lay them rest in a mound a mile high; or so it seemed.
Shocked and amazed at what my life had become, I realized that I needed to find a safer place than my wallet for this most esteemed possession. The wallet would just not do – I could set it down, I could be robbed – I could be careless and just randomly set my life down somewhere and forget about it. I bundled my life together; the photo-Ids and the embossed-holograph signed money-card that determined my monetary value -- the little pieces of plastic that remind me who I am, and what I’m not, that remind me where I can shop and where I’ve been. I bundled them into a neatly stacked pile, and I decided to bundle them with a rubberband. I looked at it in amazement and wonder because of all the implications that this stack of plastic held. I called this “my life” and I stuck it in my pocket.
The original design of my life was fatally flawed in such a way that I could have never predicted. The smallest oversight was in the way it was held together. Little by little the rubber that bound me like glue started to wear. Tiny microscopic rips in the structural configuration of the rubberband started to add up, unbeknownst to me. Whilst enjoying a leisurely trip to Taco Bell with my best friend, all hell broke loose. As I reached into my pocket, the flexibility of my life had reached wits end. The rubber band snapped sending various pieces of identification flying in all directions. My very best friend in the world sat there and laughed – laughed at my life.
Yes, yes indeed… My life is falling apart and you’re just sitting there laughing.
I must reassemble, put my life back together… and oh, a thicker rubberband is in order.