843

    I wanted to talk about this piece because I've been thinking about a lot of things lately, but to sum it all up, I've been thinking about what I find important and how I spend my time. Last night a friend of mine came over for dinner and the discussion lead to academia and how he was always successful in that way because it was important to him and was the only way that he received praise. Any topic somehow revolving around academia, successes in school, etc. always makes me uncomfortable because people are usually surprised that I did poorly in school, including college. I only feel compelled to share this information if I'm participating in a conversation that requires me to share (and I've never been good at lying unless it felt absolutely necessary) or someone makes a comment that is supremely stupid and assumptive about intelligence or smarts in relation to grades. People ask why; they ask how. I wonder this myself sometimes, because there certainly are many reasons why school did not rank more highly for me, but in the interest of keeping it brief and not telling my complete life story, I'd say real life just got in the way. I had other things to take care of, spoken or unspoken, they were things I felt responsible for and had to take care of so school typically fell by the wayside especially after middle school.

    This piece is personal and insightful to me because there is way more to it than meets the eye and that was absolutely my intention. It is unassuming, the colors mostly pastel and safely barricaded within sterile melamine shelving. It's called 843 after the store number of the Wawa I worked at. This is the organization of their sandwich station which I still remember: Top Row (L to R): turkey, chicken salad, provolone cheese, sweet peppers, bacon, tuna salad, turkey. Middle Row (L to R): italian meat prep, roast beef, american cheese, pickles, american cheese, ham, italian meat prep. Bottom Row (L to R): lettuce, tomato, banana peppers, mayonnaise, onions, tomato, lettuce. The piece was roughly 4 ft x 8 ft. Not an evil place, but a place I felt trapped at. I was working two jobs equaling 40+ hours while going to school full time and trying to keep an eye on my dad as best I could because we couldn't afford a visiting nurse and he had been recently released from the hospital. I would drive home on my breaks and before/after classes to give him his pills, feed him, clean up a mess if there was one.  I don't honestly remember how I slept, though I must have managed some because I remember waking myself up folding my bedclothes the way we would wrap up the sandwiches.
    
       While in school I kept the story to myself because I had conflicting emotions about sharing it. I wanted to be cryptic and being so made me feel elusive while maintaining my privacy and hiding my shame that I was overweight, worked in fast food, and had things outside of school that I felt responsible to take care of. I'm sharing it now because it's in the past, I'm making my peace with it, my father has passed, and I'm free from several of the burdens I had then. I also feel the piece means nothing really without the story. People like a locked door, but they like it more if they know where the key is. They want the whole thing and can only stand being teased for so long and really, what is it but a bunch of colored squares without knowing what they represent? What is it without knowing why they represent food and what food means as a lifeline in that I worked with food all day to afford food and care for my family?

      The piece was thrown away. I left it hanging on the wall of sculpture building in my school because I had no way of removing a piece that large. They kept it up for at least a year after I graduated. They'd removed it sometime around 2010.