REGRETS

If I could turn back time.
—Cher

You know an inmate’s been down too long when he asks you, “What’s the difference between a pop-top and a pull-tab?” and he’s fascinated with your explanation, however inaccurate, that the beverage industries created the pop-top in an effort to improve recycling.


Reflecting on his youth, the inmate says, “My little brother and I used to take those pull tabs and make really long chains and hang them in the door way of our kitchen. Our old man wore a Stroh’s hat made from the aluminum. Yarn and glue held it together.”

I nod in agreement and tell him my old man had one of those hats too, way before the deposit law. I ask him if he’s ever heard of reversible vending machines and he says, “No I haven’t.” So I explain to him, “It’s where you feed empty cans and bottles into a machine. It reads the bar codes and tallies how much money the store will owe you.”

He changes his answer, says, “Oh yes I have,” but his sense of awe changes to sadness as he realizes how much he has missed in the outside world. His main source of information comes from the staff and his black and white television. “I’ll probably die in here,” he states.

It’s the subtle changes in our world that go unnoticed. I tell him about the one time the reversible vending machine spit out my receipt and it slid under the plastic cover. I’d thought I lost about ten dollars. After several attempts at trying to fish the receipt out of the crevice, I rang the bell for assistance and waited … and waited … and waited.

I think he thought I meant for him to have patience. Unfortunately, some things can never be reversed.