Cleaning out a wallet...

Until this morning, my wallet was about three inches thick, stuffed with photos, loose papers, receipts, and (mainly) cards of practically every type you can imagine: grocery store discount club cards, credit cards, debit cards, membership cards...

...until this morning. This morning, as I searched in vain for my social security card (which the Social Security Administration recommends you NOT keep in your wallet, incidentally), I decided to sort through all the junk in my wallet, which is now deflated to a limp, more manageable one inch thick. I may even be able to follow my mother's advice and PUT IT IN MY POCKET.

("That's a worry, Max... you carrying your wallet around in your hand like that.")

So... since I know you're dying to know, and since I know you'd ask if you, uh, CARED... here's what was in my wallet.

First, what I got rid of, in no particular order:

* Two PC reservation receipt slips from the Fletcher Library in Burlington.
(Seeing as I just moved to Burlington last Wednesday and first visited the library here last Thursday, these are obviously recent additions to the effluvia. But when I yanked the stack out of the envelope, they were on top, so...)

* Ticket stub from the Monday, July 31, 2006 showing of A HARD DAY'S NIGHT at the Ambler Theater.
(That was a great night. Ignoring for a second that I went to the movie ALONE, nonetheless it was a revival showing of the Beatles' first movie on a big screen. But the coolest thing about it was that the audience was about evenly divided between aging yuppies, first generation Beatlemaniacs and boomers, and KIDS... junior high and high school kids who were obviously as into the Beatles as I was at that age. Heartening. And a great movie, one that could just as easily have been made on July 30, 2006 as in 1964.)

* Two yellow DRIVER'S LICENSE UPDATE cards from Pennsylvania, both from long-ago moves, both long-since-expired.

* An ACME SuperCard Preferred Customer keychain card.
(Somehow these supermarket club keychain cards never made it onto my keychain. Just like I never really made it into Acme when I lived in Lansdale, even though there was one less than six blocks from my home. Reference Hennings Card below.)

* A 2006 Ambler Savings Bank wallet calendar, which I apparently picked up before my account was closed due to too-frequent overdrafts.

* The companion to the ACME Supercard Preferred Customer keychain card: the actual full-sized ACME Supercard Preferred Customer card.

* An expired Pennsylvania driver's license.

* Another ACME card.
(Sheez, you'd think I was Wile E. Coyote, the number of ACME cards I had. And again, like I said, I seldom shopped at the place. But when I did, I could always find a freakin' Supercard!)

* Another supermarket card, this one for Genuardi's.
(Genuardi's used to be a nice, small, family-owned supermarket chain in the Philly 'burbs... then Safeway bought them out, and they got all... how can I put it... customer service-y? Someone in Safeway Corporate wanted Genuardi's to look less like Safeway East and more like Your Friendly Hometown Market, and so they instructed the cashiers to call their customers by name, tell them how much they'd saved with their club card, and as a courtesy, ask if they needed help carrying their bags to their car.)
(Thus, I'd stop in after work for a salad and a few pieces of fried chicken, and as the cashier handed me my change, he would look down at the receipt, check how much I'd saved with my club card, get my name from the printout, and then say something like "You saved... 24 cents today, Mr... Sheck." Never pronounced my name right, not once. Now, what's worse "customer service:" stumbling over someone's name in an artificial attempt to Appear Friendly, or just being kind?)
(Of course, every now and then they'd add"Do you need help carrying that to the car, Mr. Sheck?")
(Oh, yeah... these two fried chicken thighs and four ounces of lettuce and shredded carrot are fucking BREAKING MY BACK, MAN!!!!!)
(At first, I felt afraid to go in... then I thought "I'll shop there; I just won't use my club card. That way they won't know who I am.")
(Then I finally realized: I DIDN'T HAVE TO SHOP THERE! And I never went back.)
(Henning's had better fried chicken anyway. See below.)

* A Giant Bonus Card.
(I always had a soft spot in my heart for Giant. Even though they were long ago bought out by a Swiss conglomerate, they started out as the Carlisle Food Market in my hometown, and their offices are still based there. Mom shops at Giant, so I did, too, for a while.)

* A business card from a guy who dated a girl I once had a crush on.
(All is forgiven, you prick. Ha, ha.)

* An Amtrak ticket stub from either November 6, 2005, or November 5, 2006. I think it might be 2005. Harrisburg to Philly. It must have been a trip to remember. I don't, though.

* An expired Hosteling International membership card.
("You saved... forty dollars on lodging today, Mr.... Sheek.")

* ANOTHER expired Hosteling International membership card.

* My expired and long-since-overdrawn Ambler Savings Debit Mastercard.

* An expired Paypal debit Mastercard.

* My Lansdale Public Library card. I think I returned everything that was due before I left town. It'd be totally in character, though, if I hadn't.

* An expired AAA card.

* My Guardian Dental Guard Preferred Network Plan ID card from my old job.
(Uh... about these pus-y gums...)

* Two ATM receipts
(One so old and faded that I can't even read the type; a second from a Visa gift card where I withdrew all of the available funds, apparently: $60.00 withdrawal, plus $2.00 "ATM Owner Fee" [that's always a cute one, isn't it? I am reminded of a Dead Kennedys lyric: "They just want your money/ They just want your consciousness/ They're a bunch of liars!" But I digress.] and under the $62.00 total, the cryptic line ACCOUNT ENDS. Indeed, it does.)

* An ID card from Keystone Health Plan East.
(Never used it, not once. Seriously, at least my ex- got her money's worth out of my insurance. One of us had to.)

* An Enterprise Rent-a-car card from Enterprise in Carlisle, given to me by the Chevy dealership in Carlisle after they pronounced my car dead last week.
(Funny: they always make these rental cars sound like such great deals... and then you get to the fine print. The best part of trying to rent a car last week was my call to Avis. "Thank you for calling Avis," the college kid on the other end of the line said, "where there are always cars available.")
("Yeah, I'm in Carlisle, and I need a one-way rental to Burlington, Vermont for tomorrow.")
(Long pause.)
("Uhhhh... could you please hold?")
(Another even longer pause.)
("Uh... hello... sir... we... actually... we have a shortage of cars today...")
(And that was the final word from the land where There Are Always Cars Available. And the next day, I was riding Amtrak.)

* The backing from my Keystone Health Plan East card, which I never read.

* Another freakin' Keystone Health Plan East card.
(If it had been as easy to get a referral as it had been to get a card, I might have used the card once or twice.)

* Two more health insurance cards: Personal Choice (why, thank you) and Blue Cross Prescription Program.
(Never... used... either... one. Do I get any money back?)
(Didn't think so.)

* Another business card from Enterprise, this one from Fort Washington, PA.
(This card has apparently been in my wallet for five years, because I remember when I rented a car from Enterprise... or tried to: my twentieth high school reunion, back in 2002. I had a debit card and they wouldn't rent a car to me. Apparently, when you try to rent a car with a debit card, they place a hold on your card for an amount that is more than any sane person would pay for a rental car.)
(But at least they always have cars available.)

* My handwritten instructions for accessing the voicemail on some long-ago phone number, written in pencil on half of a catalog card from the library.

* My dentist's business card. Think it's too late to call for an appointment?

* A laminated Ambler Savings account information card.

* A ticket stub from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, for a show called "American Sublime."
(I swear I remember nothing about this show, except that I went with my friend Greg. We also went to the Mutter Museum, which, sadly, I remember vividly.)

* A 3x5 index card, folded in half, with the following written on the unruled side:

Hacksaw
Olive oil
Motown discs
------------
Edwin Starr?

Dustbuster plus
filter
Eureka Boss 402
filter

(Believe it or not, I know exactly what this note is: it's a shopping list for the Q-mart... the Quakertown Farmer's Market. I remember the rude woman at the vacuum repair stand as I tried to explain, with the EXACT MAKE AND MODEL NUMBER OF MY TWO VACUUMS, what I needed and she insisted no, this would work instead. After which I actually drove to WALMART to find what I needed.)

* An expired Amoco-BP credit card.
(I got six or seven fillups out of this one before I maxed it out.)
(That's a pun: Maxed it out. Ha, ha, ha.)
(BP-Amoco didn't think it was funny, either.)

* A Blockbuster membership card, from back when I had a working VCR.

* A Free Library Of Philadelphia card.
(When I was cleaning out boxes of books from my storage space, I came across a few long overdue library books from the Free Library, with due dates of 1993! I can't imagine they want them back, but I'll send them along anyway.)

* A Working Assets phone card.
(I think that this is the phone card for which I wrote down the voice mail instructions. This was yet another service that Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. Then the bills came; they were more than I expected, and as happened so often the last fifteen years, it came down to a choice: pay the bill or eat. So I ate. I haven't been able to get long distance on my phone bill since. Another piece of karma that I hope to eradicate with this move.)

* My Bucks County Free Library Card.
(I worked at the library in Doylestown for close to four years, left for my job at Montgomery County Community College, always meant to go back and see all my old co-workers, but never did. Still feel bad about it... also feel bad about the two CDs from Doylestown I never returned: Merle Haggard's LAND OF MANY CHURCHES and Brian Wilson's eponymous 1988 debut solo album.)

O.K.... so that's what I pulled from my wallet and trashed... now, here's what stayed IN the wallet:

* My current Pennsylvania driver's license. The car is dead, but I'm still alive. This proves I am who I say I am, somehow.

* A small red paper heart that someone gave to me.

* The access phone number, PIN (which you should never write down) and instructions for my current long distance phone card (eKit, through AYH).

* My Borders Rewards card
(...which I always seemed to forget whenever I was buying books or CDs... and there it was, in my wallet the whole time, hiding between 8 different grocery store cards.)
(Which leads me to...)

* Henning's Market Preferred Customer Card and keychain card.
(I will probably never shop at Henning's again, and it breaks my heart. Henning's was my favorite grocery store in the Philly 'burbs. It's a family-owned, single-store-only supermarket in Harleysville, PA, and the selection and quality are better than any other local market, even if the prices are sometimes a little higher. I would sooner have driven 15 minutes to Henning's and paid a few cents more, knowing that my money was going into a truly local business, than walked six blocks to chainstore Acme and paid less for the same item. Which, incidentally, was never really "the same item," since Acme's quality was, in my experience, far inferior to Henning's.)
(Henning's also has a great buffet for breakfast, with UNLIMITED BACON, and great fried chicken and other comfort foods for supper. And fantastic coffee with unlimited refills. I spent many, many hours writing and revising while sitting on the mezzanine of their cafe. I daresay I wouldn't have finished my master's if it hadn't been for Henning's.)
(So, even though I will probably never shop there again, I am keeping their card in my wallet, as a reminder of one thing and place I will miss from the Philly burbs, even if the rest of my time there was, to quote Charles Emerson Winchester, "No memories; I blot it out as it happens.")

* Two stubs from Cardinal Camera in Lansdale.
(I dropped off two rolls of black and white film there about a month ago. Obviously, I won't be picking it up any time soon, but once I start working here and get some cash rolling in, I can send these slips to someone and have them pick up the pics for me.)

* A Tennessee Driver's License for Elvis A. Presley, address 3764 Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, TN 38116. Expires 8-16-77.
(Why, the signature alone on this thing is probably worth a fortune!)
(And in a weird quirk of iTunes synchronicity, who came on my iTunes shuffle as I typed this paragraph? Elvis, singing "Paralyzed." What else?)

* Three baseball cards, in the wallet's photo protector sleeves: a 1992 Topps Stadium Club Cal Ripken, and 1982 Kellogg's 3D Phillies cards of Pete Rose and Mike Schmidt.
(Pete's gambling problems got him banned from the Hall of Fame, but he'll always have a place in my wallet.)

* More Amtrak ticket stubs, these from a train trip to Montreal in September 2002.
(I missed these; they should go on the other pile. No point in carrying them around with me everywhere.)

* The combination for the lock on my storage space at Carlisle Rent A Space.
(Which reminds me: I need to make a copy of my driver's license and mail it to them.)

* A card from artist Leo Sewell, www.leosewell.net, who makes the coolest sculptures out of found objects. I donated some junk to him; I hope he was able to use it.

* My shrink's card from Fort Washington.
(Margaret, I never told you this, but since I'm not seeing you anymore, I guess I can say it now: I loved you. You struck me as kind of a ditzball sometimes, yet every time I'd leave our appointments, at least one thing you said and often many, many more would resonate and I'd be transformed. I felt like we connected on a level that I really needed. [Plus, you're a hottie. There, I said it.] May our paths cross again someday. Without you, I would have never made this move.)

* Another photo protector with the following pictures and cards in it:
A picture of John Lennon standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, flashing the peace sign.
My ASCAP member card.
AGHHHHH! TWO MORE INSURANCE CARDS!! HOW'D THEY GET IN HERE??? TRASH!!
A picture of my Dad, my Grandpa and I, at my first wedding. Of all the pictures I own, this is the one I'm fondest of.
A picture of my friend Meg and her two daughters. Sigh. If only...
A picture of my part-Terrier, part-Lhasa Apso Pepper, may he rest in peace; a black and white shot I took of him for a summer photography class in high school. He's sitting on the wicker couch on the back porch, looking at a bird or squirrel or something in the yard.
A picture from my first wedding, of Stephanie and I walking down the aisle. From there, it was all downhill. Hate to sound like that, but even our honeymoon sucked. I should have known.
A picture of June, bathed in golden light. This picture was taken on a vacation in the Adirondacks.
Another picture of Meg, this one of her driving, taken by me in the shotgun seat.

* A 2006 wallet calendar reading ELECT BRAD M. DOLL MAGISTERIAL DISTRICT JUDGE. (But wait! There's more! Turn it over and it's TEST YOUR EYESIGHT. Two charts: "Hold this card at arm's length- 2 feet in front of your eyes. Test each eye separately.")
(This card is one reason I never used any of those insurance cards.)

* My current ATM and credit cards.

* Red Cross Blood Donor card

* Red Cross CPR and First Aid Certification, both expired.

* Baseball Hall of Fame membership card, with Bob Feller on the face. Free admission and ten percent off museum shop purchases.

* My current AAA card.

* A computer user card for Fletcher Free Library in Burlington. Since I can't get a library card yet (no permanent address), I have this.

* Perhaps the coolest item in my wallet is this next thing, but it's kind of a long story:
On the weekend of my 25th high school reunion, my friend Cris stayed with her family ("the time suckers") at a friend's apartment in Carlisle. The night of the reunion dinner, I walked over to the apartment to meet her and her husband so we could walk to the dinner... but they weren't ready yet. Her son (five years old) and daughter (12) answered the door, and the whole time I stood there listening to Cris explain that they'd be a little late, go ahead without them, they'd be over in about 45 minutes, her kids were EYING me...
When Cris and her husband finally made it to the dinner, Cris said, "Well, first of all, I had to explain to my son that no, you WEREN'T my date, and yes, I was still going to the dance with Daddy, we were still married... and then my daughter said 'Well, if he's going alone, he'll need to meet someone... and she's either going to be a wicked witch or a beautiful princess."
Which brings me to the Coolest Thing In My Wallet: a two-sided drawing, encased in a plastic baseball-card sleeve protector, that Cris' daughter drew for me, with a beautiful princess on one side, wide-eyed, surrounded by hearts, a flower clutched behind her back, and a wicked she-devil on the reverse, finger pointed scoldingly, forked tail and horns, scowling, surrounded by the fires of hell.
It reminds me of my friend and her family, true, but is also a tangible connection to her daughter, who is a writer. And, to get a little deeper, it also reminds me that much as I love my friends, they have identities and roles beyond being my friend. They need to be there for more people than just me. I keep that in mind any time I'm feeling neglected.
I wouldn't sell or trade this drawing for the world... and I can't wait for the next reunion, at which Cris' daughter will be 17, and this drawing may well be a valuable tool for embarrassment.

* My Temple University General Alumni association card. No expiration date on this one.

* My Goddard student ID.

* A Lifestyles condom. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

* The gift tag from the Christmas package that my sister wrapped this wallet in.

* An affirmation from an old (Monday, April 15, 2000-something) Louise Hay page-a-day calendar:
I let go of anything and everything that could delay my good in any way.

Like all the old useless shit in my wallet.