bagel

in most major cities it seems like its generally the same, post boxes and door to door delivery and whatnot. in london the royal mail post took forever. idk if its because of the volume of mail coming out of that city, or if i got scammed and it wasn’t a real post office, or if it just was crossing the atlantic ocean. theres a cancelled credit card with my name on it floating in the royal mail ether somewhere.

in warsaw i waited in a long line to mail my postcards. the post office was more decorated, and had a small gift shop and some pharmacy items inside. the clerks waited at desks and they had a paper ticketing system for guests. the ladies seemed comfortable in there, and the other people in the store knew them. it was refreshing, i honestly felt so awful i didn’t speak any polish. i think i paid around 10 USD to mail 5 postcards. london was more expensive as usual. i think it was £20 for 4 postcards there

in costa rica i never really visited the post office myself. i just knew it’d take a month for something to get to me or arrive at home. this was in 2024 and it was rather important to me that i get my mail in ballot for the election, but the costa rican mail service didn’t let me down. my vote was submitted. we still lost though. that day is a whole different story - our uni gave us the day off

in germany the post office was at the back of a paper store, and was very straightforward at a reasonable price. i mailed around 10 postcards out of berlin, and they arrived to america around 2 months later. not the fastest nor slowest service. i suppose it is very far away

when i tried to mail things from paris, i was informed that shipping to america was all on hold due to a strike against.. americans! i chose to hold my mail until my next destination

“she’s a pistol”

“working hard or hardly working?”

“what’s all this then”

“happy wife happy life”

ive been working for my family business for 5 years now. same position and everything until this year i got a promotion. its weird how things have subtly changed since i was 14

i always worked in the pro shop and there's a self serve cooler full of ice with bags for 6 packs of beer. the lid to the cooler is broken. it has been for years, we just dont care to get another cooler from the back room

in high school i'd always hire my friends to work cashier for me, i've had a steady stream of teenagers i employed for my mom. it was fun. i always felt like i was getting paid to hang out with them, and it made making plans easy

in all of those different coworkers and also the long term employees who ive watched grow up or have watched me change from a kid to a teen to a young adult: no one has ever decided to get a different cooler for the pro shop. what a phenomenon. its almost like an inside joke now. customers walk in. buy a 6 pack. drop the lid to the cooler, thinking they broke it

sometimes they try to be sneaky about it and set it down really quietly as if we didn't hear it drop to the floor. sometimes i reassure them that it's been broken and it wasn't them (sometimes)

no u seem fine its just the way you talked about damon albarn that bothered me thats all

when i was in the 4th grade my teacher mrs R taught the class about building neural pathways and how this creates long term memories despite the natural decay as life progresses. she told the class about persistence, how if you really want to remember things you have to think about them over and over and over and

this lesson has forever stuck with me, and now a decade later i still think about it. ironic, right? lessons of algebraic equations, types of formulas and so so many wars have just slipped right through one ear and out the other, lessons i wish i remembered to give me advantages for lessons i now want to learn

nevertheless mrs R was one of my favorite teachers. my elementary school was sincerely special, in an encouraging and powerful way. i do feel it has and will have a deep responsibility for the girl i am now and the woman i'm going to become. i walked in on the first day of 4th grade, ready for another year of laughing with my friends and nurturing my rich imagination in such a happy flowing classroom.

i was wearing a red dress with a black collar. my mom had chosen it for me, as she wanted to complete her ritual of snapping a photo of my little brother and i on the completion of another summer, the beginnings that seemed so big

throughout the year mrs R would pull me aside. i was an extremely active listener in class, a teacher's dream. (despite misbehavior straightened out in 2nd grade.) she'd ask me what i'd worn on the first day of school. the first few times she asked i'd forget. she never did

at the end of the year, it was revealed that she wouldn't be teaching at my school the following. this broke my heart, but she reassured me she'd never forget my red dress with the black collar

i've changed a lot since then. i think about all of the people i've met, and consequently those that i've forgotten i ever did. sometimes they come back, in a fleeting scent or moment that we had shared together. its not a painful nostalgia, like the kind i feel when i'm riding my bike past the cemetary where i used to hang out when i was 14 or thinking about the elusive time capsule thats forever lost in my childhood park. i don't even remember my first kiss. but yet i remember what i wore on the first day of 4th grade. red dress black collar

is it possible for us to remember something FOREVER? it seems like the more i want to forget things the harder they cling to my mind, but maybe that's exactly whats supposed to happen