I haven't been full time server or bartender in 6 years. But when I was I had a server book that I used every shift. Tomorrow, or later today rather, I will beginning training for a server/bartender shift.
It's the shift I wanted 11 years ago. That led me to apply other places, burn out, try the corporate world, burn out again and then ironically, find my way back to the service industry for shifts that I long ago desired.
I was ready for bed but the impulse to find my old server book was strong. It had a picture of my kids as basically infants, it had stickers I had earned, it was covered in tape. It had seen the dark side of the serving world and had survived. Like any retired knight headed back into battle, I wanted my trusted tool to be with me.
I didn't find it.
However, I did do the thing that I dread most. I let memories and mementos out of their boxes. I have always been a collector. A keeper of things that had special significance. In high school I was teased for having a shadow box of things on the wall in my room. I had boxes and boxes of memories and moments stashed away in the basement. At the end of most school years I would empty my bag and locker into a box and set it on the self for historical preservation. In the chance I had a presidential or famous person library, I had saved the genius of each of my scholastic achievements in a box. Easily set up for display.
While this may have seemed very forward thinking for a grade school aged child, in hindsight it was also super egotistical and narcissistic. And that hubris played into tonight's lack of sleep.
I went looking for this server book. Probably long discarded. And I found years of memories, moments, and terrors instead.
A trophy from grade school baseball? I found two. Evidence of former lovers? How about an engagement ring, a pair of earnings, a box full of pictures and even the love notes from freshman year of high school.
Interested in out of date technology? I found 7 different phones. 2 external hard drives. A box of unused 3.5 inch disks ready for late 90s term papers. I found cds a plenty, a musical black hole that I have fallen down with enthusiasm.
The first Ken doll that was based off of Captain Kirk? Yep. But out of the package. The first Macfarlane Toys Kevin Garnett figure? Yep. In the case and close to mint. Look out kids college fund!
Boxes and boxes of paperwork, papers, note books, diaries. Hopes and dreams in horrible handwriting. A thousand sketches of the same crystalline object. Some really horrible emo white boy poetry.
We used to print photos. Before we had a computer in our pocket. I found albums and albums. Theater productions in Boston and Kentucky. An impossible young me in Twelfth Night in Concord MA. All the photos from theater in Kentucky, photos of me on stage, playing someone else because I couldn't be myself day to day. An album of kid photos from the 7 months I was separated from them by states and hours and ego. That brought the tears.
Once the tears started, they didn't really stop until I dried up. Boxes and boxes of history. Of what if. Of things that I loved, moments of people I loved, lost or drove away. Trophies that meant so much in a moment in time, like the stupid bowling trophy that one cast gave me or the nearly complete series of Blacklash comics from 1995-1997.
I didn't find the server book. But like an anthropologist who all too eagerly opens a sarcophagus, I find so many ghosts. I don't know if I'm ok or not but man, ghosts are so real. They just hide in your head until the right trigger.
I guess I'll get a new server book. With new stickers. With a new picture of the kids.
For this new adventure. And I'll ask the ghosts to stay in the basement like Harry in Harry and the Hendersons. That works. For a while.
