You Can't Go Home Again -- Hallmark Edition

I was down in Long Beach over the weekend, visiting the fam, dining with The Cruiser, and selecting that most important of marital symbols, the wedding band. As we were driving all around town, I was giving Nicole the guided tour she could never have hoped for. There's the place I took my car when I had a nail in my tire...This used to be a Woolworth's...I had a BLT there once...You get the idea.

At one point she asked if there was a Hallmark nearby as she needed some cards. I was more than happy to oblige that there was not just a Hallmark, there was the Hallmark. I'm talking about Dick's Hallmark #5 on Spring Street, my friends. The place I spent several of my spare high school era hours as a proud member of the Dick's team. As we were on our way there, I started to reflect on the good ol' days at Dick's. I laughed about how funny Kay and Bev were, how nice Katheryn was, how we once caught the biggest cockroach of all-time in the back room and put it on display (in the back, of course). I remembered the many boring Sundays spent there working with Becky and the ridiculous things we did to pass the time. There was the giant homeless man who would amble in with his headphone blaring, take a lap around the store, yell out something random such as "That was the greatest time I ever had!!" before walking out again. I was our store Santa one year at Christmas and the Easter Bunny too if I am remembering correctly. I could go on and on. It was a great place to work for those three or four years.

We parked, got out, and Nicole asked, "Where is it?" I calmly answered, "It's right next to the Hollywood Video. It's right the--" I stopped short when I realized that the windows usually lit by the fluorescents I replaced dozens of times were dark. The displays I dusted over and over again were gone. The card racks I hosed down out in back in my swim trunks on a summer afternoon were no more. No cards. No Precious Moments. No people. Dick's Hallmark had been closed.

I've never been known to handle loss well and this moment was certainly no exception. Did I cry? No. Come on, let's not get melodramatic here. But I was certainly very upset. Remember in "Gross Pointe Blank" when John Cusack goes home to find that the house he grew up in was now a convenience store? It felt similar to that. They closed the doors on a chunk of my childhood and I knew nothing about it until that moment when I walked up to the doors. I peered inside and saw my memories gutted before my eyes. Emptiness. Nothing but cold, hollow, soulless emptiness. And it seemed so vast. Like the moment after being dumped when you realize despite the freshness of your pain that you've already been left behind, I was heartbroken.

Part of my love/hate with Long Beach is all the things it reminds me of when I return. Sometimes it's fun to recall the old days. Other times, it's a vacuum that fools me into believing I never left. Then there's the times like this one when it's neither. These are the times when I realize the old days are gone and not only have I left, but I can never go home again.