Bought a used cookbook, found a 40 year old shopping list inside

Last week I grabbed a beat up copy of a 1970s casserole book at a yard sale in Portland for 50 cents. When I got home, a folded piece of paper fell out with a handwritten grocery list from 1984. It had items like margarine, instant coffee, and a note that said 'pick up Billy from practice at 5'. It made me wonder who Billy was and if he ever ate that celery casserole. I sat there for a good 20 minutes trying to picture this stranger's kitchen. Has anyone else found something personal tucked in a swapped book? What did you do with it?

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1 Comment

hugohall8d ago

Right, but flip it around for a second. That shopping list is just trash. Someone's old margarine order and a note about Billy. You're out here assigning deep meaning to a piece of paper someone threw away. The owner of that book probably dropped it on purpose because it was cluttering up their drawer. You're romanticizing a stranger's Tuesday afternoon like it's a lost chapter of a novel. And you sat for 20 minutes picturing their kitchen. That's 20 minutes you'll never get back, and for what? To feel a fuzzy connection to a person who likely forgot that list existed by the time the ink dried. Billy probably grew up, moved to Arizona, and never thinks about that casserole book once. The whole thing is just junk that happened to survive because paper is cheap. Now me, I would've trashed it the second I saw it. Not out of coldness, but because holding onto someone else's leftover life is weird. You're carrying around a ghost that doesn't want to be carried. Next thing you know, you'll start wondering about Billy's kid's soccer games. That way lies madness, not nostalgia.