2020: The Year of the Patch
It’s here! Big Trip Year! Still no flying cars, but I’ll take this over those anyway. (Would be even cooler if we could do the travel in flying car, though. Just sayin’.)
So, we collect embroidered patches as souvenirs. They get pinned to a corkboard in our living room, and by the end of this adventure, we’re pretty sure we’re gonna need a bigger board.
I have to back up for a minute and tell the story of how the patch collection began, though. It was 1999, and our friends Jen and Shawn were doing a lot of camping/road trips around the U.S. They came up with the idea to collect patches and sew them on to a blanket that could be their camping blanket. They were very excited about this idea. We thought it was a good idea, too, but just in a “oh, that’s cool” kind of way. No excitement. Just a meh reaction leaning slightly towards positive.
Fast forward to a camping road trip of our own, through eastern Canada and New England. First stop was Niagara Falls. We loved it and wandered around the town. We stopped in a gift shop and tried to decide on a souvenir. We didn’t have a lot of money, didn’t really need more t-shirts, and nothing jumped out at us.
Until…”Hey, look, there’s a patch!”
Suddenly Jen and Shawn’s idea was the most brilliant one we’d ever heard. They were geniuses! What a great idea! And you know what would be sooo fun? Let’s compete with them, so we all keep traveling and collecting these? It’ll be the best challenge and will encourage all of us to keep finding new adventures. This. This is THE BEST IDEA IN THE WORLD.
Well, this was before cell phones, or at least before poor college kids could afford them. So we decided to collect patches on this trip to catch up to Jen and Shawn. Then we’d tell them all about our patch challenge when we got home, and they would LOVE IT.
Fast forward to the end of our multi-week trip, and we had a lot of patches. Every New England state. Every tourist site. Every campground.
Uh oh. We’d taken their idea and run way too far with it. We weren’t friendly competitors. We were idea-stealing, thunder-stealing assholes. And now we had all these patches that we could never tell them about, because it would just seem mean.
Occasionally I’d talk to Jen and try to casually throw in, “Hey, how many patches do you have now? That’s a great idea you had.” “Taking any more trips soon? You should get some more patches!” But she never took the bait. Our pile of patches stayed tucked away in a brown paper bag in our closet, like a dirty little secret.
Did we stop collecting them? Hell no. We were in it now. No turning back. But we wouldn’t dare display them, because what if Jen and Shawn came to visit? It would be a total disaster. We were George Costanza and Elaine in our own Seinfeldian situation.
Fast forward again to 2006. I was pregnant with Sagan. Jen and Shawn were visiting. We went out to lunch. I puked in the bathroom of the restaurant. (Morning sickness is fun.) I came out and decided it was time to confess. How could I be a mother and continue to live such a lie? Such an important, monumental lie?
Me: “Okay, I have to tell you something.”
Jen: “What?”
Me: <tells the whole story, ending with a big apology, hoping she won’t hate me>
Jen: “Oh my god, I thought you were going to tell me you were dying or something! Don’t do that to me! We gave up on the patch thing eons ago, and who the hell cares, you big dummy?!” (I may be paraphrasing just a bit, but you get the idea.)
So, it turns out we’re still friends. And our patch board is on proud display for all to see. And Jen and Shawn still love traveling, and so do we, and we all still love each other. But I’ll forever give them credit for THE BEST IDEA IN THE WORLD. :)
And now Story has decided to collect her own patches for her own little boards. Maybe one of her buddies will secretly start a one-sided competition with her, too.
Story’s Homemade Patch #1: “Emagination World.”
Story’s Homemade Patch #2: “I Have Been to the Arch.” Man, we need to get this kid some more real ones in her collection ASAP.
