Heartbeats

Seeing this video makes me think of Thrifty’s drugstore and their gumball machine. Thrifty's was your average big box drugstore with its numerous aisles and apathetic employees. The Thrifty’s was near my parent’s drycleaning shop, past the lumberyard but before the radioshack.

Thrifty's had good ice cream. 35 cents a scoop comes to mind but that seems too cheap. (I just verified the price with my sis and it seems the scoops were as low as 25 cents and, over time, it progressively increased to a dollar.)

My sister and I would get the chocolate brownie and for my parents it was always Butter Pecan. Always – except for a brief time when my dad flirted with mint chocolate chip.

I’m thinking back to 25 cent days. This was a time when visiting the drycleaners was relatively fun, before I scrubbed collars. I’d find loose change and I hoof it to Thrifty’s. For ten cents, if I calibrated the metal dial with a safecrackers touch, the gumball machine would lay two possibly three rubber bouncy balls.

That was my joy back then, my raison d’etre. Stickers, candy, gum – all of these were inconsequential. Why would I buy those when I could purchase powerful orbs bordering on magic? The strength in which they’d bounce made me happy. I’d throw some as high as I could and just see what happened.

If I saw this video back then, I would have resorted to petty crime and bankrupted my parents. Witnessing the video would have set the bar too high for an innocent mind.