Fancy Tenders
On the news, things were getting too frightening, too unpredictable. He decided he was leaving for good and he needed to find his passport. He searched through a bright orange shoe box full of old things and important paperwork. Between the buttons, knick-knacks, and other junk drawer fodder, he sorted through all sorts of different tax returns and random bills. Why he’d stacked the most important with the least was perhaps a fair reflection of his frazzled mind– its warped priorities, which in and of itself was an apt representation of his entire species in its current predicament. As he sifted through the box, concluding the passport would not be there, he looked through other boxes of things (for in this cluttered abode, there was no shortage of boxes from other consumer product brands, and there was no telling what important items were stuffed between all the garbage). Broken pieces from forgotten toys, unfinished homework from decades past, all of it seemed to get in the way. It was during his search that he came across an old diary. He of course made the fatal mistake of sitting there to read it. It was a strange feeling, reading his old journals. Though the crooked etchings would have been illegible to anyone else, he understood them easily enough in their childish, impatient rendering. Yet they seemed the words inscribed by a stranger. They were words written by a less troubled, a less embittered soul. A young soul that had long since ventured for calmer seas as the storm was steadily washing in. His expressions spoke with levity and a staggering lack of self-consciousness that the man longed for in his current day.
Passage after another, the diary entries seemed filled with nothing but inane observations. How blissfully unaware of the troubles that would come years down the line. It was one brief passage in particular which moved him so unexpectedly.
“On today’s date, let it be known I had a really awesome day. I went out for a walk, I saw a really funny movie, and then later I had some chicken nuggets and a milkshake for eight dollars! Point is to say, today I had a great day, and let this page live as proof that at one point, life was awesome.”
How glad he was that such a beautiful brief moment of joy was captured by his younger self on paper, but oh how he regretted he didn’t remember this particular day, or whatever sensation he may have felt in any visceral, sensory sort of way. All he could think was how nice it was that he could get chicken nuggets and a shake for so dirt cheap back then. Chicken nuggets had become a luxury commodity in today’s economy.
One thing he still vividly remembered was when chicken tenders were a staple food for any broke high-schoolers like him. On certain special days, he and his friends used to pool their meager cache of dollar bills together, using the total to purchase a single basket from the fifties nostalgia diner near their school. And it was while they gathered around a little plastic basket, sometimes green, sometimes red, while the wax paper soaked all the grease from these playfully shaped, deeply fried chicken strips, that memories of a simple life had slowly begun to work their way into their comfortable existences. He would never forget how well the tenders went with a little plastic cup of ranch, a dressing you could dip your strip into for added zest. Checkered cloths and a jukebox. This once reliable staple meal was now the inevitable victim of the seismic state of the economy. The breadcrumbs had fallen forever.
He sat in glazed nostalgia for this palatable, junky treat, a comfort that now seemed so elusive. And that was why reading the diary was such a costly mistake. He failed to find his passport that day.