My Worthless Treasures BY REESI NESBITT ’ 22
After every shift at the pottery store , I empty the hole punchers we use on rewards cards , put the little star and heart cutouts in a container , and bring them home . Because of this habit , I have far too many hole punches , but I can ’ t bring myself to get rid of them regardless of how pointless keeping them is . I collect these because each cutout matches exactly the card of a complete stranger , leading my collection to represent an expansive network of human connection . Rewards card remnants aren ’ t the only purposeless items I accumulate . My treasures consist of every single school paper from my freshman year , a name tag that I wore on my first day of middle school , old receipts with my name spelled wrong , the broken sole of a tap shoe from my eighth grade play , half of a piñata , an empty tube of chapstick , four-and-a-half blue rubber gloves from sophomore Chemistry , an old flip phone , and much more . While I agree that many of these items are trash , I refuse to part with them because I find them to be dusted with the gold fairy dust of beautiful moments .
One of my most important treasures is perhaps the most worthless of all : a McDonald ’ s napkin . The napkin itself is not particularly special but instead serves as a canvas for one of my most treasured conversations , one that used no words . I became acquainted with this particular napkin on a summer day of 2016 in the rural McDonald ’ s of Dickson , Tennessee . Upon walking in the door with my grandmother , our only other company was a lone McDonald ’ s employee and a frail lady in her early 70s sitting by herself . As I play back the memory in my mind , she is illuminated with gold light that glimmered as particles of dust passed through its beams . As the fluorescent lights of the
McDonald ’ s packed no such beauty , I estimate that this gold hue was instead painted there by the nostalgia of this day . As a result of my grandmother ’ s deep-rooted gentle nature , she could not bear the sight of anyone sitting alone , so after placing my Happy Meal order , she took her Sprite and her compassion right over to the lady ’ s booth . After introducing ourselves we became aware of the lady ’ s deafness . We quickly shifted our conversation to a white napkin sitting on the table as she took a pencil and in rounded handwriting wrote “ Your name ?”
Her name was Louise , and as our conversation developed she filled napkins with words and drawings that fascinated me . I think a lot about those hands . I think about the hands that were connected to her mind , and I wonder where she is or if she ’ s even still here . I hope she knows I remember her and cherish our inaudible exchanges .
Through that simple piece of cheap paper , I am connected to Louise . I hold a piece of her and , in that way , I refuse to let her be forgotten . I am the guardian of her handwriting , her words , and the tangible marks she made as her pencil clashed against paper that prove to be the workings of a human being with a unique story that I barely glimpsed .
This is the exact reason why each and every one of my objects holds such deep sentimental value . I feel this great responsibility to be the guardian of the stories the objects hold and to be the protector of the memories they absorb . My objects forge a connection between my past self and my present one while simultaneously creating a personal timeline with tangible portals into moments . So yes , the objects that are important to me could easily fit in with the contents of the average trash bin , but it is their saturation with history , emotion , and human influence that no one could ever throw away .
CPALIONS . ORG 9