Insignificance

A paper bag is an insignificant thing. I rarely think about them. This one I thought about. It reminded me of a story Moby told me.

Moby told me how he worked at a record store in Darien, CT in the early 80s. He said he used to draw a little picture on every customer’s paper bag full of records, thanking them for their purchase. I wonder how long some high school kid just discovering music held on to one of those paper bags. The one the older, wiser record store clerk drew a picture on just for them, for the world to see while they carried home their new favorite record. I imagined paper bags floating all over Darien emblazoned with the “Little Idiot”.

I ordered a bagful of records from Wooden Tooth Records for curbside pickup. I’m not good at curbside pickup. The act of shopping is online is different, impersonal. When I buy records online the hellos are gone. The smiles are non-existent. The used smells of other lives picked up by each album do not float about the air. I wonder how many times in a row the previous owner replayed the sandalwood soaked Donovan record I hold in my hands. The carefully curated playlist the clerk plays, hoping to turn someone on to something new, can only exist when shopping in the store.

One lonely Saturday night I went to Wooden Tooth Records to buy some new music. The clerk was playing a documentary about The Velvet Underground and Nico. It was projected on to a back wall. I’ve heard The Velvet Underground and Nico album thousands of times in my life. I had never heard that documentary, and I still don’t know what it was called. It consisted of short interviews with the band and various facts preceding the playing of each track on the album. I didn’t watch the projection on the wall I just listened as I flipped through the records.

I was very content that night. A simple random event like the playing of one of the most familiar albums in my life brought comfort back to the world. Familiarity is comfort. When Wooden Tooth Records had to close the doors to in-store shopping due to the stay at home orders I felt was necessary to fall from the familiar and figure out how to buy records from them online. They figured out how to sell them to me and after all this was a place that had given me comfort many times. Maybe now they need the comfort given back to them.

I ordered that bagful of records, picked them up curbside, and drove home. I set the bag down flat on the coffee table and just as I was about to open it I noticed the handwritten message in a black Sharpie.

“Thank you!!”

The memory of the story came back to me at once. Local business creates memories, and its memories that we’re after. Memories bring familiarity to us and comfort us in trying times.

It likely took about two seconds to hand write “thank you!!” on my paper bag. Those two seconds of humanity can last eternities.

You won’t get this kind of touch from anywhere but a local business. I think of the new catchphrase “Stay Home” and I hope it takes on a new meaning on the other side of all this madness. Home is your locality and you should always stay there, from shopping to eating out to everything. Stay Home, Stay Local.

We don’t need to be farther apart, we need to be closer together.

What’s written on this paper bag is more valuable than what is inside.