Nostalgia Trip

A nice-looking woman of maybe thirty enters the Dominion one Saturday afternoon with two children in tow. She comes up to the counter and says, “You know, I can't believe this place is still here.”

“Still here?” asks Fernando as he wracks his memory in search of her identity. He draws a blank.

“Yeah. I would have thought it would have closed by now. I used to work here years and years ago.”

“Oh?” asks Fernando. “When was this?”

“Back in the late '80s, early '90s.” She looks over her shoulder at some of the rental racks. “Wow, I can't believe you still have VHS tapes here.”

“Yeah, that's something I've been trying to remedy. Weirdly enough, people rent the VHS tapes but they never buy them.”

“So who owns this place now?” she asks.

“That would be me,” says Fernando, and he hands her a business card.

She glances over it for a moment, then looks up. “Stevens....are you related to Celes Stevens?”

“Indeed I am. That's my aunt.”

“She went to high school with me! Well, not with me. She was a few years older than me.” Then she suddenly leans over the counter and peers at a magnet on Fernando's filing cabinet. “You went to CMU?”

“Class of '06.”

“So did I! Where did you live?”

“Trout.”

“No kidding! I started in Troutman, then moved to Washington Village! You know where that is?”

“Well, yeah. When I used to head downtown we'd walk right past them. I'm pretty sure I went to a few parties in that vicinity as well.”

She laughs. “Only pretty sure?”

“Well, they wouldn't have been very good parties otherwise,” Fernando says with a small grin.

Then she asks, “Can I ask you a favor?”

“I don't see why not.”

“I'm up here from downstate visiting my family with my kids and I have my camera in the car. Could you take a picture of me standing in front of the store?”

“Absolutely I can.”

So Fernando heads outside to help the nice lady relive and remember her past. The picture turns out quite satisfactory, so she thanks him, piles the kids into her minivan, and heads out of Fernando's life forever.

But the world had been made a happier place through Fernando's actions on that day, so it was okay.