Remember Blockbuster? Year-end summary statement from defunct card triggered memories
It’s merely a coincidence I’m “spring cleaning” in April. This unplanned mood to purge won’t last, but I’d like to share a thing I stumbled upon. And this thing tossed me into a rabbit hole that stirred up memories perhaps we can all recognize.
I’m not a hoarder, but I tend to stash random physical papers as much as my file drawers allow. They’re bursting a little now, hence the new “to shred” pile. I have a “miscellaneous” folder, an “interesting stuff” folder and others with similar vague tabs. It was in one of those purgatory stashes I found a year-end summary statement from a defunct credit card. Remember the Midwest Express Airlines card? Holy cow. I saved one of their detailed expenditure booklets. It’s 20 years old.
Pretty sure credit card companies no longer send paper year-end summaries to our physical mailboxes. That in itself makes this tangible, itemized find astonishing. And fascinating to thumb through.
Announcement: Life has really changed in two decades. Not just my life, but all of ours. For example, we’ll never again swipe our credit cards in a Blockbuster video rental store. I can’t even say “tapped,” because I don’t think we tapped our cards in 2004.
And now I wonder, am I even old-fashioned for mentioning that little plastic rectangle? Many of us today wave our phones with Apple Pay or whatnot. Maybe some of us now just glance at cashiers and they read the QR codes of our souls to bill us. Wait, what’s a cashier? The cashiers are us. We funnel our bodies through self-check registers, then to pay, we exhale our Venmo vapors into the ether, right?
That’s even if we walk into stores at all. Thank you, Amazon and Door Dash. These are overwhelming thoughts.
I imagine walking back to the old Blockbuster on State Line Road and explaining today to 2004 me. There I’d be, clutching an “Elf” DVD for my grade school sons, asking my 2024 self what I mean by “streaming” movies. I would probably gasp to learn this thriving place with the abundant shelves of entertainment and oversized Milk Dud boxes would soon enough become a dark, dust-bunny dance floor.
2024 me would admonish, “If you gasped like that today, your watch would alert your phone that your heart rate just changed. And you wouldn’t want to hold your breath, either. Your watch would go bonkers if your blood oxygen dipped.” 2004 me would just look at my analog Timex and flip phone and think future me had lost her mind.
The credit card summary booklet of 20 years ago reminded me of other Blockbusteresque disappearances. Skimming through, I was reminded Saks Fifth Avenue on the Plaza is gone. There’s no more Galyans, Osco Drugs, Wild Oats, Earl May Garden Center, Bed Bath & Beyond and beyond and beyond. From one billing snapshot, many beaten paths have been beyonded.
Then there are personal lifestyle changes. I no longer need to attend Scholastic Book Fairs, which, shhhh, is kind of a relief (the pressure). No more Boy Scout store visits. The Great Wolf Lodge is off the radar, and doubly so with the long-gone Rainforest Cafe. Another relief on that one. I was always distracted by the fake storms and plastic jungle leaves. Good riddance, overpriced dinosaur nuggets.
The things you remember, and the things you want to forget, can somehow be documented on an old mundane credit card summary. Combing through, I realized 2004 was the year I rushed to buy plane tickets to tend to a dramatic family emergency back east. Was that accident really 20 years ago? Bills don’t lie. When I tucked away this laundry list of purchase transactions, I didn’t realize it would read like a diary.
That statement reminded me how my world, and our world, has changed, both dramatically and subtly. Sometimes I miss the flip phone days. Can someone Door Dash me a Will Ferrell DVD with a giant box of Milk Duds?
Reach Denise Snodell at stripmalltree@gmail.com
