Around Here

I archived my bank statements, as I do each year. One day a couple of years ago, I reorganized my previous bundles, which had been stored in plastic grocery bags, into neat 9 x 12 envelopes, filed by year in a tupperware box. I opened a few statements and became quickly absorbed in the transactions, a kind of biography, a tale told by money exchanged, income acquired and payments made. Here was the check for the television spot I’d made for the sporting goods store whose obsessive-compulsive owner’s son (as difficult as his dad) turned out to be a champion golfer whose budding career in high school I ended up covering for the sports page at the local newspaper years later. Here was the charge for the Inn that I booked after connecting online with someone who promised that he could show me a better time in Fort Lauderdale than I could find in Key West, a good time that finally ended a year later in another inn on Sanibel Island. My old address book, a handsome tome still offered by the ...