6 Eggs for a Dollar

The assignment: go through old receipts, bank statements, canceled checks, etc. What do they say about your life, past or present? Do they represent anything? List them, and then use them to write a poem or story. (Mine is a very dark tale, and although completely true, I don't actually ever feel like that. Okay, not often. My life is really not that bad, it just worked in the story.)

P.S. I've given in to my dark side, and it turned out to be one of the better things I've written lately.

I was a broke 22 year old. I had recently graduated from college, had yet to find a “real” job, and was still making little more than minimum wage. I was searching for a way to pay the upcoming rent; shuffling through old papers, and searching for anything I could sell. I found my receipt for last month’s rent, which I had paid on the fifth: four days late. I had perfectly good explanation; I had gotten paid on the fourth. I looked at my old pay stubs, and then at my bank statement for last month, and all my receipts that I had collected since the last time I paid rent. There were no “extras” among my receipts. I had not been near a clothing store in six months, I had only gone out to dinner once, and only to the bar once. My receipts, all six of them, included two grocery shopping receipts, three convenience store receipts, and a receipt from the day that I didn’t have enough time in the morning to make myself a lunch for that day at work. I had gone to the pizza place across the street and charged $2.62, the cost of a slice of pizza and a small diet coke. My bank statement was even more depressing; I had overdrawn my bank account three times, and been charged $19 for each overdraw. They had charged me $19 for the $1.92 I spent at the post office mailing something to my brother. It was ridiculous. The more I looked at all of the numbers, the more desperate I grew. I needed to get a real job, and soon. I couldn’t even pay my rent, so the student loans I had taken out to go to my dream ($40K a year) school were obviously out of the question. I sat down on the floor, and reconsidered donating my eggs. I mean, really, I could spare a few thousand of them, right?