Russ and Jerri: A Thrift Store Love Story
I've had a few friends over the years that like to frequent local thrift stores to find interesting/rare items and they seemed to have pretty good luck with it. So a couple weekends ago, I thought I should see if I have any similar luck. I do not. It did however turn out I have the ability to aimlessly wander around a store full of used goods trying to imagine how the items got there. For the most part, there wasn't a lot of imagining going on; I'm pretty sure the majority of the stuff in thrift stores is only there because the people donating it would've felt bad throwing it out since it still worked and/or wasn't quite broken. But then I found a beer stein that may have been one of the greatest beer steins I've ever seen.
If I were a betting man, I would say the owner of the stein played Dungeons & Dragons, or at least they wanted to. There was a wizard for the lid, some viking-type warrior on one side and some guy fighting a dragon on the other side. But the best part to me was that there was an engraving on the bottom, making me think this stein may have been personally made as a gift. (I know the stein may have been store bought and only engraved after the fact, but that does not make for a good a story). How such an awesome stein ended up in a thrift store was beyond me, but I think I've deduced how it got there...
Russ and Jerri met through mutual friends shortly after college, as was common for people their age back in the early 90's. Jerri thought Russ was a bit of a nerd, but he was kind of cute and he seemed to have a good head about him. Russ was immediately head over heels for Jerri and couldn't believe such a beautiful woman was even talking to him. They began dating soon after.
Jerri had one complaint about Russ, and that was that he spent his Saturday nights playing Dungeons & Dragons with friends instead of spending that time with her. But looking back at her dating past, she knew if that was the only thing she could find to complain about in Russ, she'd found a keeper. While most people knew of Jerri as a journalist (and a damn good one at that!), few knew her favorite hobby since she was twelve years old had been pottery and for her one-year anniversary with Russ she was going to put that hobby to work. Using all the free time she could get over the next few weeks, Jerri made Russ what she considered to be the perfect gift - a beer stein decorated in a theme of that game he loved so much.
Russ nearly teared up when he saw the stein. It wasn't just that he thought it was beautiful, but he knew how she felt about his hobby and the fact she would put so much work into a gift for him was unimaginable. He knew right then and there he wanted to marry her. A month later, after the most romantic evening he could plan (with the help of some friends of course), Russ asked Jerri to marry him. She said yes.
For the next few years, the lives of Russ and Jerri were perfect. They were each doing great in their careers and before long they were buying their dream house in a wonderful neighborhood. They were even talking about having kids, though they still felt they had time to figure that out. Slowly, but surely, as the years continued to move on, Russ was around less and less. Jerri knew it was for work, Russ worked in computers and for better or worse, computers seemed to be taking over the world and consequently Russ was always needed to fix some problem or another. She wanted to try and talk to him about their lack of time together, but there just never seemed to be a good time for that conversation.
What started out as innocent flirting at work for Jerri eventually turned into an emotional affair. Which soon turned into a physical affair. At first she felt awful and she hated herself for it. She told herself it could never happen again and that she needed to do all she could to make her marriage work. But after repeatedly eating at the dinner table alone, she found herself back in the arms of her coworker.
The affair went on for a year before Russ finally found out. He cried, he screamed, and after the longest night of her life, he left. Jerri was absolutely devastated. How could she have been so selfish, so foolish? Why couldn't she have just spoken up so long ago and they could have avoided all of this?
It would be two weeks before Russ returned home. He came with moving boxes and went to packing before Jerri said a word to him. But she was determined not to lose him, not to lose what they had. She apologized as he packed, not letting his silence deter her in trying to fix things. She promised it would never happen again and that she would do whatever it took to make things right. Russ remained silent, grabbing a large box and heading to the living room. He froze as he approached a display shelf near the TV. Jerri followed Russ's eyes and saw he was staring at the stein.
Russ continued to stay with a friend for some time while the couple went to counseling and after a few months they were back together again. Russ did his best to cut back his work hours, but he was still gone more often than Jerri would like. Still, she was happy they were working it out. And better still, they were finally going to work on having a family.
Emily was born as healthy as can be and things were once again looking wonderful for Russ and Jerri. Russ had moved to a new employer and not only was he making more money, but he was working less hours. Some of Jerri's work was being recognized at a national level and she'd even been invited to speak at a prestigious conference. She did not tell Russ that the coworker she'd had an affair with would also be attending the conference. She felt bad keeping that little bit to herself, but she didn't want to create any tension in their marriage, especially not when things were going so well. Besides, she told herself, she had no intention of spending any more time with that man than what was professionally obligated.
It was the last night of the conference and Jerri was enjoying a drink at the hotel bar to pass the evening away, excited for her flight home in the morning. As she was about to leave her coworker showed up, along with a few other people from the conference. She agreed to have one drink with all of them before heading back to her room. One drink led to many drinks and before Jerri knew it she felt like she was in college again without a care in the world. She knew she should tell her coworker to stop flirting with her, that those days were over, but the flirting was fun and surely the next drink had to be the last before she headed back to her room. But soon she found herself following her coworker to his room. In the back of her mind a voice was screaming at her to stop this and go back to her own room, but the rest of her mind was thrilled with the haze of intoxication and rationalizing "just one last time."
Jerri woke with the worst hangover she could remember having. It took her a couple minutes before she realized she wasn't even in her own room. She screamed in shock. Her coworker mumbled something incomprehensible and pulled all the blankets onto himself. Jerri felt a powerful wave of nausea and ran to the bathroom, barely making it before vomiting into the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror, trying to tell herself this wasn't happening and it was just a bad dream. Remembering bits and pieces of the previous night caused her to vomit again.
Without looking at a clock she knew she'd missed her flight. She looked for her clothes on the floor using the little light coming through from the edges of the curtains, all the while cursing herself for being so foolish. Her coworker told her she should just join him back in bed and they could worry about life later. She told him to fuck himself as she left the room.
She arranged another night at the hotel for herself as well as booking herself on the next morning's flight home. Then came the thing she was dreading the most - calling Russ and telling him that she missed her flight and would be home a day late. She was honest with him in saying that she drank too much the night before and that was the cause of her delay. Much to her surprise he laughed and told her not to worry, he wasn't in a rush to go back to work anyways and that he'd see her the next day when he picked her up from the airport. Him being so understanding made her feel all the worse. Jerri spent the night wondering how she could cry so much while being so dehydrated.
Jerri was sure she was acting weird when she first got home, but Russ made no mention of it. After a few weeks things felt back to normal for her and she was sure her mistake at the conference would soon just be a bad memory. As she got ready for bed, she checked her email one more time to see if there was anything from work. Instead there was an email from her coworker. It seemed their time together meant more to him than she had thought and he was sure their hotel hookup was a sign they should be together. She was infuriated at the man's audacity and hit the power button on the computer before heading to bed. Russ was already asleep as she crawled into bed. She got as close to him as she could without disturbing him, taking comfort in the heat radiating from his body.
Russ had no idea why he awoke in the middle of the night, he was usually a very sound sleeper. But for whatever reason, he was awake and he couldn't fall back asleep. Rather than risk waking his wife by tossing and turning, he went to the home office and started up the computer. When he went to log into his email, the browser brought up his wife's. Russ couldn't count the times he'd tried teaching Jerri about internet safety, but apparently those lessons still weren't sinking in. He was about to log her account out when he noticed an email from her coworker that she'd cheated on him with years ago. He knew he shouldn't look, that it was an invasion of her privacy. Chances were it was work related - there was no way she would risk being with this man again - not after all they'd been through. But still, the lack of a subject made him curious and if nothing else, he told himself reading the email might give him an insight into her professional life and in that way he'd know her all the better. Russ didn't even finish reading the email, but instead just stared at the screen seeing and feeling nothing.
It may have been five minutes or five hours that Russ just sat there, time ceased to move at all for him. Part of him wished he could just die right there and not have any of this matter any more. Instead all he could do was decide he was done. Using an old flashlight, Russ packed a suitcase with all that he thought was essential. At one point he considered the beer stein, thinking he may want a memory of the good times he had with Jerri. Holding the stein while trying to decide was the closest he would come to crying that night. He put it back in the shelf a left a note for Jerri on the kitchen table. "I know the full reason you returned a day late from your trip," was all it said.
The divorce wasn't messy in the typical sense. Russ told her to take the house and all that was in it and if there was anything she didn't want, she could give it to charity or throw it out. Outside of court he wouldn't even acknowledge Jerri's presence if he didn't have to. But what hurt Jerri the most was Russ denying any visitation rights to Emily. Instead he said he'd pay whatever the court ordered, but he had no desire to see a child that would only remind him of his failed marriage. The last Jerri would ever see of Russ was him getting into a cab without so much as looking in her direction.
Jerri decided to sell the house and got rid of nearly everything in it; she knew her best chance to move on was to get a clean start. She did however keep a box of souvenirs and other small mementos she just couldn't bring herself to get rid of. The stein was one of them.
The next few years were not good for Jerri. She developed a drinking problem and found herself going from one short relationship to another. She made sure Emily had food and clothes, but beyond that she was about as absent as a parent could be. Eventually her drinking cost her her job and to make matters worse, she was no longer receiving money from Russ and she could not figure out why. She ended up having to sell her house and move in with family. It was here Jerri felt she was at her lowest and vowed to quit drinking.
Within a year she was working again and within a year of that she was buying a townhouse for her and her daughter. It was during the move into the townhouse that Jerri came across that old box full of memories from her marriage. Jerri felt like she'd come a long way since the end of the marriage and it would be safe to go through the items, so she decided to make an evening of it.
Jerri turned her phone off and had Emily's grandparents watch her for the night. Then she pulled out the box and started going through the items. She began crying immediately, but she expected it. And as she went through the items, she found herself laughing at times too. There was a coffee cup Russ had stolen from a fancy restaurant they had gone too because he "wanted to feel he was getting his money's worth." A key chain from a vacation they took that turned out to be rather horrible, despite all the planning they had done to make it amazing. A bookmark Russ bought for her early in their dating just cause he was thinking of her while at a bookstore. The ticket stub from the first movie they'd gone to, dozens of goofy and out-of-focus pictures, and a letter he'd written her while he was out of town for his grandpa's funeral. And of course there was the stein.
So many memories laid out before her and each one of them seeming as important as the others. But Jerri knew she shouldn't keep all of it. She picked a couple pictures to keep, one just of Russ and one of them together, and threw out the rest. She also thought the letter he'd written her was worth holding onto, but the rest of the personal correspondence also went into the trash. She decided she'd keep one knick-knack and the rest she would donate to a thrift store. It took her a good hour to figure out which small item to keep, but at last she was able to pack the rest up into a box for droping off in the morning. She set the key chain with the pictures and letter.
Well this went way longer than intended. And is probably not even close to the true story. But in my mind, this is exactly how it happened.
If I were a betting man, I would say the owner of the stein played Dungeons & Dragons, or at least they wanted to. There was a wizard for the lid, some viking-type warrior on one side and some guy fighting a dragon on the other side. But the best part to me was that there was an engraving on the bottom, making me think this stein may have been personally made as a gift. (I know the stein may have been store bought and only engraved after the fact, but that does not make for a good a story). How such an awesome stein ended up in a thrift store was beyond me, but I think I've deduced how it got there...
Russ and Jerri met through mutual friends shortly after college, as was common for people their age back in the early 90's. Jerri thought Russ was a bit of a nerd, but he was kind of cute and he seemed to have a good head about him. Russ was immediately head over heels for Jerri and couldn't believe such a beautiful woman was even talking to him. They began dating soon after.
Jerri had one complaint about Russ, and that was that he spent his Saturday nights playing Dungeons & Dragons with friends instead of spending that time with her. But looking back at her dating past, she knew if that was the only thing she could find to complain about in Russ, she'd found a keeper. While most people knew of Jerri as a journalist (and a damn good one at that!), few knew her favorite hobby since she was twelve years old had been pottery and for her one-year anniversary with Russ she was going to put that hobby to work. Using all the free time she could get over the next few weeks, Jerri made Russ what she considered to be the perfect gift - a beer stein decorated in a theme of that game he loved so much.
Russ nearly teared up when he saw the stein. It wasn't just that he thought it was beautiful, but he knew how she felt about his hobby and the fact she would put so much work into a gift for him was unimaginable. He knew right then and there he wanted to marry her. A month later, after the most romantic evening he could plan (with the help of some friends of course), Russ asked Jerri to marry him. She said yes.
For the next few years, the lives of Russ and Jerri were perfect. They were each doing great in their careers and before long they were buying their dream house in a wonderful neighborhood. They were even talking about having kids, though they still felt they had time to figure that out. Slowly, but surely, as the years continued to move on, Russ was around less and less. Jerri knew it was for work, Russ worked in computers and for better or worse, computers seemed to be taking over the world and consequently Russ was always needed to fix some problem or another. She wanted to try and talk to him about their lack of time together, but there just never seemed to be a good time for that conversation.
What started out as innocent flirting at work for Jerri eventually turned into an emotional affair. Which soon turned into a physical affair. At first she felt awful and she hated herself for it. She told herself it could never happen again and that she needed to do all she could to make her marriage work. But after repeatedly eating at the dinner table alone, she found herself back in the arms of her coworker.
The affair went on for a year before Russ finally found out. He cried, he screamed, and after the longest night of her life, he left. Jerri was absolutely devastated. How could she have been so selfish, so foolish? Why couldn't she have just spoken up so long ago and they could have avoided all of this?
It would be two weeks before Russ returned home. He came with moving boxes and went to packing before Jerri said a word to him. But she was determined not to lose him, not to lose what they had. She apologized as he packed, not letting his silence deter her in trying to fix things. She promised it would never happen again and that she would do whatever it took to make things right. Russ remained silent, grabbing a large box and heading to the living room. He froze as he approached a display shelf near the TV. Jerri followed Russ's eyes and saw he was staring at the stein.
Russ continued to stay with a friend for some time while the couple went to counseling and after a few months they were back together again. Russ did his best to cut back his work hours, but he was still gone more often than Jerri would like. Still, she was happy they were working it out. And better still, they were finally going to work on having a family.
Emily was born as healthy as can be and things were once again looking wonderful for Russ and Jerri. Russ had moved to a new employer and not only was he making more money, but he was working less hours. Some of Jerri's work was being recognized at a national level and she'd even been invited to speak at a prestigious conference. She did not tell Russ that the coworker she'd had an affair with would also be attending the conference. She felt bad keeping that little bit to herself, but she didn't want to create any tension in their marriage, especially not when things were going so well. Besides, she told herself, she had no intention of spending any more time with that man than what was professionally obligated.
It was the last night of the conference and Jerri was enjoying a drink at the hotel bar to pass the evening away, excited for her flight home in the morning. As she was about to leave her coworker showed up, along with a few other people from the conference. She agreed to have one drink with all of them before heading back to her room. One drink led to many drinks and before Jerri knew it she felt like she was in college again without a care in the world. She knew she should tell her coworker to stop flirting with her, that those days were over, but the flirting was fun and surely the next drink had to be the last before she headed back to her room. But soon she found herself following her coworker to his room. In the back of her mind a voice was screaming at her to stop this and go back to her own room, but the rest of her mind was thrilled with the haze of intoxication and rationalizing "just one last time."
Jerri woke with the worst hangover she could remember having. It took her a couple minutes before she realized she wasn't even in her own room. She screamed in shock. Her coworker mumbled something incomprehensible and pulled all the blankets onto himself. Jerri felt a powerful wave of nausea and ran to the bathroom, barely making it before vomiting into the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror, trying to tell herself this wasn't happening and it was just a bad dream. Remembering bits and pieces of the previous night caused her to vomit again.
Without looking at a clock she knew she'd missed her flight. She looked for her clothes on the floor using the little light coming through from the edges of the curtains, all the while cursing herself for being so foolish. Her coworker told her she should just join him back in bed and they could worry about life later. She told him to fuck himself as she left the room.
She arranged another night at the hotel for herself as well as booking herself on the next morning's flight home. Then came the thing she was dreading the most - calling Russ and telling him that she missed her flight and would be home a day late. She was honest with him in saying that she drank too much the night before and that was the cause of her delay. Much to her surprise he laughed and told her not to worry, he wasn't in a rush to go back to work anyways and that he'd see her the next day when he picked her up from the airport. Him being so understanding made her feel all the worse. Jerri spent the night wondering how she could cry so much while being so dehydrated.
Jerri was sure she was acting weird when she first got home, but Russ made no mention of it. After a few weeks things felt back to normal for her and she was sure her mistake at the conference would soon just be a bad memory. As she got ready for bed, she checked her email one more time to see if there was anything from work. Instead there was an email from her coworker. It seemed their time together meant more to him than she had thought and he was sure their hotel hookup was a sign they should be together. She was infuriated at the man's audacity and hit the power button on the computer before heading to bed. Russ was already asleep as she crawled into bed. She got as close to him as she could without disturbing him, taking comfort in the heat radiating from his body.
Russ had no idea why he awoke in the middle of the night, he was usually a very sound sleeper. But for whatever reason, he was awake and he couldn't fall back asleep. Rather than risk waking his wife by tossing and turning, he went to the home office and started up the computer. When he went to log into his email, the browser brought up his wife's. Russ couldn't count the times he'd tried teaching Jerri about internet safety, but apparently those lessons still weren't sinking in. He was about to log her account out when he noticed an email from her coworker that she'd cheated on him with years ago. He knew he shouldn't look, that it was an invasion of her privacy. Chances were it was work related - there was no way she would risk being with this man again - not after all they'd been through. But still, the lack of a subject made him curious and if nothing else, he told himself reading the email might give him an insight into her professional life and in that way he'd know her all the better. Russ didn't even finish reading the email, but instead just stared at the screen seeing and feeling nothing.
It may have been five minutes or five hours that Russ just sat there, time ceased to move at all for him. Part of him wished he could just die right there and not have any of this matter any more. Instead all he could do was decide he was done. Using an old flashlight, Russ packed a suitcase with all that he thought was essential. At one point he considered the beer stein, thinking he may want a memory of the good times he had with Jerri. Holding the stein while trying to decide was the closest he would come to crying that night. He put it back in the shelf a left a note for Jerri on the kitchen table. "I know the full reason you returned a day late from your trip," was all it said.
The divorce wasn't messy in the typical sense. Russ told her to take the house and all that was in it and if there was anything she didn't want, she could give it to charity or throw it out. Outside of court he wouldn't even acknowledge Jerri's presence if he didn't have to. But what hurt Jerri the most was Russ denying any visitation rights to Emily. Instead he said he'd pay whatever the court ordered, but he had no desire to see a child that would only remind him of his failed marriage. The last Jerri would ever see of Russ was him getting into a cab without so much as looking in her direction.
Jerri decided to sell the house and got rid of nearly everything in it; she knew her best chance to move on was to get a clean start. She did however keep a box of souvenirs and other small mementos she just couldn't bring herself to get rid of. The stein was one of them.
The next few years were not good for Jerri. She developed a drinking problem and found herself going from one short relationship to another. She made sure Emily had food and clothes, but beyond that she was about as absent as a parent could be. Eventually her drinking cost her her job and to make matters worse, she was no longer receiving money from Russ and she could not figure out why. She ended up having to sell her house and move in with family. It was here Jerri felt she was at her lowest and vowed to quit drinking.
Within a year she was working again and within a year of that she was buying a townhouse for her and her daughter. It was during the move into the townhouse that Jerri came across that old box full of memories from her marriage. Jerri felt like she'd come a long way since the end of the marriage and it would be safe to go through the items, so she decided to make an evening of it.
Jerri turned her phone off and had Emily's grandparents watch her for the night. Then she pulled out the box and started going through the items. She began crying immediately, but she expected it. And as she went through the items, she found herself laughing at times too. There was a coffee cup Russ had stolen from a fancy restaurant they had gone too because he "wanted to feel he was getting his money's worth." A key chain from a vacation they took that turned out to be rather horrible, despite all the planning they had done to make it amazing. A bookmark Russ bought for her early in their dating just cause he was thinking of her while at a bookstore. The ticket stub from the first movie they'd gone to, dozens of goofy and out-of-focus pictures, and a letter he'd written her while he was out of town for his grandpa's funeral. And of course there was the stein.
So many memories laid out before her and each one of them seeming as important as the others. But Jerri knew she shouldn't keep all of it. She picked a couple pictures to keep, one just of Russ and one of them together, and threw out the rest. She also thought the letter he'd written her was worth holding onto, but the rest of the personal correspondence also went into the trash. She decided she'd keep one knick-knack and the rest she would donate to a thrift store. It took her a good hour to figure out which small item to keep, but at last she was able to pack the rest up into a box for droping off in the morning. She set the key chain with the pictures and letter.
posted by Paul | 2:32 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home