A careful life and a bygone era are embodied in a lost list

The way the paper was folded, it looked like a personal check — one of those basic blue ones — just lying on the asphalt of the parking stall as though dropped from a pocket or purse. I picked it up, thinking that I would return it to whoever’s name was printed on the left corner or at least to the bank listed at the bottom. I would want someone to do that for me.

It turned out not to be a check. It was a shopping list written in neat script on lined notepaper with a green polka dot border. The parking lot was outside a supermarket, but attached to the list with a little paper clip was a coupon for a different grocery store miles away. This person shopped around for the best prices.

Fuji apples 99c lb

That was the first item listed, and the “cents” was written out old style — a “c” with a line through it. Most keyboards don’t even have that symbol anymore.

Graham crackers 2 for $6.00

Toothpaste 75c

The first letter of each item was capitalized, as were the brand names of items — a lesson probably learned in fourth grade and carried for years, all through school, all through work years, a lesson never forgotten and put to use in even the most mundane writing, a shopping list, a litany of essentials.

Diamond G. Rice 7.49

w/ coupon

Breyers Ice Cream 2 for $6.00

with coupon

Vanilla

It was just a short list, but it felt like a story. I could picture her. I felt sure it was a woman because of the curl of the handwriting and the polka dots on the stationery. She was careful, this list-maker. She was thorough. She read the paper, clipped coupons, noticed each item that was on special that week and wrote down the price to make sure the store’s scanners at the checkout would record the price as advertised, down to the penny, down to the cents with a line through the “c.”

It reminded me of “The Things They Carried,” that powerful collection of stories by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien lists the things that American soldiers in Vietnam packed with them during the war.

If you know what a person carries, you know so much about their life. If you know what they want and need and how they plan to go about getting it, you know what matters to them. And here was this simple list with the hallmarks of a bygone era, composed with the sensibility of someone who came of age at a time when the idea of a monthly cellphone bill topping $100 would be blasphemy.

I wonder what she bought for her Thanksgiving meal and where she got the best price for her turkey. I still have her list. I don’t think she’d want it back. The items she listed aren’t on sale anymore. But I can’t make myself throw it away.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.