Collecting Memories
April 7, 2007
Kristin Fryer
I’ve always kind of been a pack rat. It began in middle school when I acquired an orange plastic mini-garbage can. Every time I visited a new place or met a new person, I always tried to take something tangible away from the experience that would remind me of it. When I travelled with my family to a swimming competition on Vancouver Island, I saved my ferry ticket and placed it in that can. Faded photo-booth photos of me and best friend Jenny were in there too, squished between an American dollar bill from my band trip to White Salmon, Wash., and an old pack of gum I bought while on a first date.
By the time I started high school, it had become impossible to stuff anything else in the little garbage can, I stopped putting my keepsakes in there. In a way, it was almost like acknowledging that a part of my life had now passed, and was ready to be put into the back of my closet, where it would always be available to me but not immediately present in my mind.
After the garbage can, my memories found a far more portable habitation: a small pocket in my purse. In my wallet, which I have had since eighth grade, I have all my student I.D. cards since seventh grade. To this day, I carry more than twenty movie tickets around with me, including a ticket from The Matrix: Revolutions dating back to November 7, 2003, the first time I met my now-husband, Chris. In that pocket, I also have a neat, multi-coloured stack of business cards. As I sort through the pile, I see many familiar names—Erica Grimm-Vance, Rita Loewen, James Woller—and some not-so-familiar—I still have the business card of Tom Haibeck, a communications rep I met last year while researching a story on the sexual harassment complaint.
While it may seem strange to some that I would keep all these things, I do not see myself as merely collecting things. Instead, I like to think that I collect experiences. All of the things I have put in that pocket are kept because they contain a particle of meaning. Life is so very evanescent—every moment I have is felt in an instant and then gone just as quickly. The things I keep remind me that those moments are not lost—each ticket, picture, or note is a point of reference. All together, they map out the timeline of my life. I literally carry my memories with me wherever I go.
As I leave TWU, I take many things with me, but will also leave many things behind. Old marked-up term papers, thousands of dollars worth of textbooks, and binders full of carefully-taken notes, though tangible reminders of the time I spent here, will not be what I carry with me. The late nights spent talking and being with friends, the sound of humming computers in the Mars’ Hill office, the warm April breeze across the lawn in front of Douglas—these are the memories I will always carry with me. Even though they don’t quite fit into my purse.
Now you go...
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