List Thief

[Teresa]

Someone has left a grocery list by the Kroger checkout register and though I feel like a thief and wouldn't know what to say if caught with it, I've tucked the list into my purse as if it is a sacred abbreviated journal. The small white sheet of paper is decorated with colorful letterhead at the top which reads: Volunteers Thanks For Sharing Your Heart; beside the words is a thin blue character holding up a large red heart full of yellow and blue stars. There are 23 items on the list written in black ballpoint pen, blue ballpoint pen, pencil and a black felt-tip pen. Two colored markers have also been tested on this sheet - one pink and one blue, and the felt-tip marker has been tested as well in seven loopy tornado swirls. The food and miscellaneous items listed are as follows: Chicken/spinach pasta, egg rolls (vegetarian), hand sanitizer, Parker onion rings, Light Mayo, 3x white index cards, soda crackers, radishes, french fries, Incredible Carpet Cleaner (red, white and blue bottle), coleslaw, milk, fruit wraps, toilet plunger, nibs, bird seed. The most interesting item on the list is a book title: The 36-Hour Day: A family Guide to Caring For Persons With Alzheimer Disease, Related Dementing Illnesses and Memory Loss In Later Life.

[Teresa]

@Brian ~ I think you and I both have our "heads wandering everywhere except looking straight ahead". I think we get lonely but at least I know there's one other person in the "club"...;-)
@Stephen ~ Thank you much.
@Bill ~ I loved your "...that urge to figure out our own lives by imagining those of others." Exactly...
@Jenny ~ Thank you and I so hope you make it to the next HoW! Sincerely.
@Michael ~ You blow me away. Thank you for indulging my little fantasy of believing I might find a whole person in a forgotten list. It's a bit how life ends for many, I think.
@Gita ~ I was guessing at the Nibs thing...
@Grey ~ "Tiny glimpses..." I think you're right. I think you and I would forget time over a few glasses of iced tea and all we have to talk about. You have one of the most lovely minds I've ever "met". It's like fine crystal.
@All others ~ Thanks so much. I've had margaritas and my fingers are numb so...;-) Just kidding (about numb fingers...)

[Brian Michael Barbeito]

i really like this teresa!
but for some reason i like most
when the list was taken and tucked
into the purse. i see these lists all the time
for some reason (probably cause my head
is wandering everywhere exept looking
straight ahead) and take them and look
at them. lists of the civilized set. letters to
self of ordinary profoundness, lol. great
work as always. :-) :-)

[Bill Floyd]

There's a bus stop near my house and kids often drop notebook pages carelessly on the ground. I try to just pick them up & trash them, but I can't help reading them first. Usually it's just school related stuff--I think the intricately folded and crush-breathless notes traded in my day are done by text now--but often I'll see a telling personal detail among the mundane assignments, and it always makes me feel nostalgic and creepy at once.

You really captured lightning in a bottle here, Teresa. It may not be fiction but it's surely in the neighborhood where fiction is born: that urge to figure out our own lives by imagining those of others. (If I can find a way to top M. Brown's envisioning of the note's author, I'll give it a whirl, but that's gonna be difficult...)

[Jenny]

T - I can only agree with the quality and perceptive craftmanship pointed out below. Hats off to you!

[Michael Brown]

I think I know who left this list lying there, and I believe she did it because she was finished with that one and had started a new one, so there's no need to feel like a thief. Interesting that it took seven swirls to prove the marker, but then, since our mysterious shopper has never been married, and is rapidly approaching that stage in life where such an outcome is beginning to appear beyond reach, she does everything in triplicate to fill the empty spaces. Her name rhymes with "knows" and she'll be standing in line behind you at the market next Thursday. Perhaps you'll let her go ahead of you as you realize the older person accompanying her cannot bear to be in enclosed spaces for long periods.
You are marvelous in every endeavor.
Incidentally, I remember reading somewhere that one of the tropes of those encyclopedic literary tomes such as Gravity's Rainbow and Ulysses is the inclusion of catalogued items, and here you've done it in a six!
I love this piece.

[Gita]

I think NIBS are small black licorice squares.
I was fine until you got to the book title and then I got very sad. I would not wish that role on anyone.

[Angela]

This was fantastic. I love the way you went from the particular to the revelation, but retained a lot of the mystery. Tiny glimpses are the best ways to see it all, I think.

[Jamie Hogan]

Love stuff like this, and this 6 in particular. Grocery lists can be telling in and of themselves, but the way you wrote this somehow portrayed a person and not a simple piece of paper.

[Paul de Denus]

There's a site called Foundmagazine.com that has a lot of such items as this story-

[Teresa]

@Toby ~ I think "nibs" are Cheese Nibs. BTW, I think it would be interesting to start a challenge and have everyone try to describe the character who created this list. I never saw the person but I have a very distinct image in mind. Is the person male? Female? Old? Young? Fat? Thin? Tidy? Sloppy? The items on the list are clues.