Recall
                                                                      by Jenna Dietzer

 

This is a public notice: In cooperation with seller's remorse and continual indecisiveness, I am recalling the following items sold at yard sales in front of our home, between the summers of 1982 and 2004:

 

Item 1: Size 5 pair of Levi's jeans with a hole in the crotch.

 

Those jeans have been stained, stolen, stripped off and – it goes without saying – sat upon. They have survived an attack from a Miniature schnauzer that mistook my leg for a mighty bone, a Peter, Paul & Mary reunion concert with my father (where the band swore to an audience full of former hippies that "Puff the Magic Dragon" was not about getting high), and three changes of major. They have walked up Central Avenue and down the trails of the Grand Canyon. And they have felt the passing of my grandfather, a time when I discovered solace in the hills behind his home, where the sun wrapped blue and lilac arms around the naked trees.

 

Item 2: Navy Blue Mu Alpha Theta T-shirt. Small.

 

The best I can really hope for is that this t-shirt has not evolved into a dishrag. Contrary to first impressions, Mu Alpha Theta is not a high school sorority (which would be the epitome of cool), but in fact a club for advanced mathematics students (the epitome of uncool). I was the president. We understood of all life's lessons: reciprocation, inequalities, and logic – something our peers often lacked – but we hadn't quite mastered the art of applying those lessons to our own lives. Instead, we had a theme song. It was set to Jingle Bells. And before Winter break every year, we would go from class to class caroling the song, which went like this:

 

            "Quadratic equations often make you cry

            But now there is a way to wave those tears bye-bye

            No need to factor now, no need to complete the square

            Just use one simple formula, this secret I will share:

            Oh! X equals minus B plus or minus radical

            B squared minus 4AC, all divided by 2A, hey!"

 

            And so on.

            I heard through the grapevine that our teacher sponsor lost his job after sleeping with a student, then went to jail on drug charges. But the year we brought home a trophy from county, he was our hero. And on the back of the t-shirt is a Thomas Edison quote that to this day both spurs me on and keeps me humble: "If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves."

 

Item 3: Tan teddy bear.

 A gift from a former boyfriend and future marine pilot, the cliché love of my life. He presented it to me unwrapped, dressed in the same aviator glasses and brown leather jacket he'd wear one day, because it would remind me of him. I was too old for teddy bears by then, too old for men who only fall in love with things that remind them of themselves. But I kept them both for a time, then learned to let both of them go. Perhaps, then, it is the memory I wish to recall more than the thing itself. But the eyes, the eyes, like his–so black the pupils and irises melt together–on the night I said it was over, did nothing but stare back at me with sweet insensitivity.

Jenna Dietzer is  originally from St. Petersburg, FL. She graduated from the MFA program at UNC-Greensboro and now works there as a lecturer in English.