Object Permanence
Christine (Teeny) Chirichillo
Whenever I ponder the afterlife, as we all do, it isn’t a vision of Heaven or Hell that plays in my mind. That’s right, I don’t expect or even hope for my soul to be swept to some spiritual space. When I die, I want to be led to a locker-room of all the belongings that I’ve lost throughout my lifetime. In only twenty years I have lost enough to have that room filled to the ceiling and flooding under the door. There’s the saying that goes “I’d lose my head if it weren’t attached to my body,” and I would take on any person who thinks they relate to this more… because I know I would win. Like, in that scenario I’m Rocky Balboa and my opponent is Sheldon Cooper. It’s not even close. As a generous thought exercise, I want you to imagine your most devastating loss of an inanimate object. Sit in those feelings, that grief, for just a moment. Now, please do your best to multiply all of that by nine. I was going to choose a higher number, but as not to undermine you and your lost item, nine feels reasonable. Yeah, the result of that little calculation is my reality.
If I were to do an inventory of my missing stuff and total it all up, it would reach a net worth greater than my current (and probably my future) bank account. In one summer I went through six cell phones. One died from a ruptured home button. It was on its deathbed for a few weeks, the button dangling by a comically thin, tethered wire. I couldn’t tell you exactly what pushed it over the edge, but I watched my screen turn from a YouTube episode of Big Brother UK into a reflection of my face… and never turn back. One drowned in my hands after my wise idea to get underwater photos just days after replacing the home button phone.. (You can never trust a Lifeproof case.) One of them fell to its death, and my virgin eyes watched it split entirely in half. (Have you ever seen a screen disconnect from the back of the phone? I hadn’t before that!). The others experienced more conventional deaths, like screen cracks so excessive they cut my hands up and discolored the phone display. Let’s just say the workers at Tech Medic knew me by name. Let’s just say this is a subject that still evokes steam out of my mom’s ears. If you asked her right now, she would probably well up with tears and monologue about how I should’ve been given a flip phone after my first fuck-up to teach me some sort of lesson about caring for your belongings. Some baloney like that.
The phones were just the beginning. My mom would often send me to high school with checks for me to put into my lunch account. These checks would be worth $100 to $200, and be completely signed and sealed, but never delivered. They would start the day safely in my binder. Class by class, papers would be shuffled, books would get kicked, packets would be distributed/turned in. By lunch time, almost like clockwork, the check was nowhere to be seen. If I was very lucky it would be returned to the main office ladies, who were less than entertained by my antics. You could hear it in their voices announcing my name on the intercom… just pure unadulterated exhaustion with students handing them something that had my name on it. If I was unlucky, I’d waste the whole lunch period retracing my schedule and interrupting class periods to no avail. The kids who used my desks in the afternoon started to check around their seat for my leftovers before class started to forgo my making them stand up when I rushed in the room. One time in particular I made a point to keep the check in my pocket until I physically handed it to the lunch lady. The route to the lunchroom was outdoors. I was in the process of boasting to my friends about how I’d reversed the curse of the missing check, and was pulling it out of my pocket to prove the point. Almost in slow motion, the wind picked up and combined with my measly grip on the small piece of paper, the check flew straight into the sky. When I say it was blowing away at a 90 degree angle, entirely vertical, I am not lying. There was no option of running to catch up to it. I watched my good standing with my mom float into oblivion, never to be seen again.
To be honest, we still haven’t scratched the surface. Bluetooth speakers, student ID’s, GoPro cameras, pairs of shoes, hats, headbands and literally so much more have disappeared out of my life thanks to a hybrid of my carelessness and bad luck. Each of those deserves a separate, equally long tribute and conspiracy theory, and recount of their aftermath. However, one specific loss stands out amongst the rest. This loss is different because it marked the end of my ignorance. It slapped me into shape the way the first five hundred situations should have.
The one thing I always thought was invincible was my backpack. Amongst my group of friends, I have always played the role of the carrier. My backpack comes everywhere, and it holds everything. There is no such thing that hasn’t fit into the confines of my Dakine bag. It’s seen it all. I used to toss my backpack into a bush at public concerts stuffed with work uniforms, my camera, a bunch of 5 dollar bills, Hydroflasks of cheap raspberry vodka, and my friends miscellaneous bits and bobs. At the time my backpack had a green, tropical-forestry pattern, which in my head was a perfect camouflage in the thin shrubbery of Sunset Park, Harvey Cedars. In actual reality, any of the thousands of people who attended those concerts could’ve seen it and snatched it. I would never know, as I was always running around freely and dancing for hours without even so much as double checking. My blind trust was so unwarranted. It stunted me badly.
This blind trust carried over into many of my adventures outside of Harvey Cedars concerts. Notably, the Fourth of July, 2020. The Fourth of July is by and large my favorite holiday. I request off work for the 4th of July in January. Usually, my friends and I spend the Fourth on Long Beach Island, hitting the beach during the day and a big celebration at night (with an outdoor shower intermission for the ages). I guess my first mistake was throwing away that tradition. In 2020, going to Rutgers seemed like the more ideal way to spend our Independence Day. Say less, thought me and my friends. We packed up the bus and went to New Brunswick, sporting red white and blue borderline obnoxiously. Obviously, this day was huge for the backpack. Inside of it was: 3 shirts I had just bought, around 400 dollars in cash, 2 of my paychecks, my car and house keys, a six pack of Smirnoff seltzers, and a disposable camera. Don’t even say it. Heck, don’t even think about it. I know. That is on me. Not one person I have told this to has even for a second pretended to understand or relate to why I thought bringing those things with me to a drunk, rowdy environment was wise. Truth be told, I didn’t think it was wise. I just didn’t think… at all. I had never gotten off the ride of my backpack always being in the bushes. I didn’t even have a wallet for my money, hence why there were several weeks worth of tips jammed into the top zipper compartment of my bag.
The party was at my friend’s house, which ingrained another level of trust in me that should never have been there. Routinely, I found a place to plant my bag. It was outside, on the back deck, under a bench. To me, that was stealthy yet accessible. Everyone was doing their thing, socializing, meandering inside and out, getting into aggressive shadow boxing fights over who would take the pong table next, screaming when the song was good and attacking when it was bad. All was right, the way it should be. Then the police showed up, which has a funny way of creating more chaos out of an already chaotic atmosphere. My group had no reason to worry that we would be stopped individually by the cops, which simply translated to “where are we going next?” My feet were moving me toward that bench. Or was it that bench? No, no it had to be this bench. But, it couldn’t be. Because my bag wasn’t there.
I’d like to think the hysterics weren’t immediate, but I know that they were. Before even vocalizing it, I was under the deck looking, in the bushes looking, wrapped around the side of the house looking. My friends, who were privy to years and years of my irresponsibility in this area were bracing for a reaction none of us could comprehend. They’d seen how devastating the loss of a speaker or phone or ____ was. None of us was prepared for the backpack to go. Another reason this whole thing sucked is because every time I was demanding someone to help me look, I had to simultaneously reveal to them the contents of the bag. This meant I had to endure the unspoken judgement and “well of course someone stole it” vibrations radiating off of everyone. No backpack meant no way to get home in the morning. No backpack meant all the weeks I’d spent working were for nothing. No backpack meant a death sentence from my parents, who would have to pick up the pieces once again. No backpack meant no more Fourth of July.
After coming to terms that it was no longer at the scene of the crime (and I checked everywhere), my group left. I’d like to issue a formal apology to my friends. They were offering true condolences, and genuinely doing their best to help me. In return, I was snapping and biting and foaming at the mouth. I was suggesting an all-night search party to find the lucky idiot who landed on the right bag. None of them made the call to bring every important object they own to a house party in New Brunswick and leave it unattended. None of them had previously lost thousands of dollars worth of stuff, resulting in a fractured trust with their parents. Yet, all of them were forced to deal with the backlash. We stomped around brooding for a while, and landed at the party where everyone migrated to. I walked through that thing, flashlight on, shoving it in everyone’s face and checking everyone’s back for my bag. There was nobody worthy of a hello. God, I must have looked psychotic if they all weren’t too wasted to see. By the time we left, my group had dwindled into just three people. The unlucky trio–Greg, Clare and Cara.
Now, Greg just knows better in these situations. He fully knew what I was in for for having lost this bag, and he was along for the ride. He didn’t offer advice because we both knew the situation was too far gone. He didn’t criticize my tantrum because he knew it would turn on him. The amount of times Greg has run beside me in turmoil is just too many to count. And I’d do it for him, too. Clare, on the other hand, comes at things differently. She didn’t account for the consequences that were on the line here. My parents are famous for their creative, long-term punishments. They were beyond allergic to all of my lame excuses for things being stolen and whatnot. Maybe Clare knew this deep down, but I’d like to think, if so, she’d have been a little bit less aggravated. The two of us peaked in argument when I decided the next best thing to do, besides tracing down the culprit, was to phone the police.
Without a word to the trio about it, I dialed 911. Now, imagine you’re an emergency phone operator for New Brunswick. You’re fielding hundreds, potentially thousands, of emergency calls per day. I’ve had friends on scene at local gang related shootings just blocks away from where we were. Those were the calls they got. Those were the crimes deserving attention. And then me, this 19 year old girl, hectically reciting the make and model of my Dakine water sport backpack. I mean, I must have been just about yelling at this dude on the other line. In return I expected drawn out suspects, helicopter beams on the street, home invasions.
“This is an emergency number. Only call when you have an emergency.”
The worst part was that him saying that to me, with anger behind his voice, didn’t even crack me out of my mania. In that state of mine, he was belittling my real emergency. When the phone disconnected, I took a look at Greg and Clare who were piecing together who I’d just called. I was met with an abysmal reaction, just jaws on the floor. I haven’t ever quite lived down the fact that I called 911 for my stolen backpack. Admittedly, I don’t think I ever should.
If you are feeling bad for me at this point in the story, I advise you to redirect your sympathies to Cara. Cara didn’t know what she was in for. In our friendship up to the Fourth of July, 2020, everything had always been copacetic. We always like to bring Cara to New Brunswick because she can integrate and, for lack of a better word, vibe with anyone, anywhere. That’s what she signed up for. I’m sure she had no clue she would end up sitting outside a random Rutgers faculty building rubbing my back and essentially mothering me into (half) sanity. Not only was she nursing the aftermath of the stolen bag, but also mediating the tension between a frustrated Clare and a distraught Teeny. If you know anything about that, you know that is not an enviable position to be in.
To me, going home meant surrendering. Going home was admitting that all hope was gone. I didn’t know how to go home without my backpack. I couldn’t go home without my backpack because my car keys to get home were inside the backpack. It was around 2 a.m when there was no other option besides going back. Our other friends were inside the house (Nobel Peace Prize to whoever left the back door unlocked that night). My face was stained red, my eyes were the kind of puffy that are not endearing or sympathy-inducing but actually makes you want to avoid the Crying Girl altogether and let someone else handle her. My mind had made the jump from worrying about where my backpack was to worrying about my parents’ reaction. The same parents who advised me daily to put my cash into the bank, and if I was going to refuse that, at least take it out of my backpack. The same parents who had been finally proud of my work ethic. The same parents who stressed to me that sometimes the best thing to do is wait until the morning to figure everything out. Right.
I called my mom at 2:30 in the morning. Just simply waking my mom up to say goodnight when I get home from hanging out can be an adventure. Sometimes it takes a minute for her to realize that she’s not still in the dream she was having, resulting in various nonsense talk. A nonsensical state of mind is not ideal when it comes to serious crises. Yes, I’m giving you this context now, but I knew it then too. I knew calling her and waking her up in the middle of the night ran a lot of risk. I was just too eager to be in the AMB stage (After Missing Backpack). I wanted all the problems to be behind me, and a path of solutions to fall before me. In order to pave that path, my mom needed to know what was up.
Oddly enough, my mom was most mad about me calling her in the middle of the night and dumping the trauma onto her when “it could just be figured out in the morning.” Don’t let that fool you into thinking she wasn’t mad about the backpack. Her head just couldn’t even catch up to all the things it needed to be mad about. Every time I even used the word “stolen,” there was a crack about how it is nobody else’s fault but my own. The bottoms of my bare feet were black, the true sign of any fun summer day, and leaving trails of footprints around my unfurnished house as I paced wall to wall on the phone taking my verbal beating. At the time, the fire alarms in my house would squeak once every two to three minutes. My friends had arguably the most soothing lullaby of all time to put them to sleep: my sobs of “I know, mom” and what sounded like a basketball player’s shoe squeaking on a court amplified through a smoke detector. I bet we could turn the two into some sort of torture ritual.
If the lullaby wasn’t peaceful enough, at least everyone was comfortable. Clare slept sitting straight up on the lone chair in my living room. Greg deservedly scored the cushioned loveseat, which was high luxury. Cara, Chloe, and a few other girls shared a towel-sized blanket between all of them, and slept on the freezing cold tile floor. I shared an air mattress that was sandwiched between my bathroom door and the basement door, and deflated air with every passing second. We were low, literally and figuratively.
The next morning I woke up to a tingling sensation of nausea. I threw up, but not from a hangover. It was my body reacting to the mess I was in. There is no other way to say it. I checked my phone and I got a text from the host of the party.
Travis: We found the backpack.
They found the fucking backpack. I shot them a call immediately, running them through the anatomy of the bag pockets and where my valuables were. As expected, every last dollar and dime was missing. The wad was gone. The paychecks were taken too, which is just plain stupid. All of our alcohol was gone, which was inevitable anyways. They pulled out my lanyard of keys, and I must have reacted the way they did when they pulled out the envelope revealing the winner of American Idol. Then, of course, they left my shirts. Now, on a macro level this is good. Those were some of my favorite shirts. On a micro level, were the shirts too ugly to steal? Did the thief not find me stylish? Overall, it was a relief. Whoever had perpetrated the crime was decent enough to bring the shell of it back to the scene. Of course, now I could have 100% gotten away with never telling my mom. The paychecks could be re-written to me. The keys would get us all home safely. Of course, the backpack itself would be present in my life. I could make all the cash back in a few weeks. Instead, I went home that day to a post-it note of directions for how I was to spend and budget my money for the rest of the summer, and a very disappointed mom.
Since that day, I have attempted to go nowhere with more than the shirt on my back. My backpack used to be my trusty steed; I hardly take it out in public anymore. It’s a weird part of growing up. I miss the madness of realizing that my phone isn’t in my back pocket. I miss the rush of running to the place where I planted my backpack and finding it there untouched. I miss the brand of being the person who can’t keep track of anything. I don’t miss, however, the hell it put everyone in my life through. From my college roommates having to put their flip flops in our dorm doorway ever ytime I lost my key card, to my mom spending thousands of dollars replacing my phones… it was not a lifestyle worth living anymore. Wages earned, and lessons learned.
Christine (Teeny) Chirichillo is senior Communications Major at Rutgers University, originally from Manahawkin, New Jersey.
Christine wrote this piece in a creative writing course taught by Caridad Svich, who selected the work for inclusion in WHR.