Receipts
SANITY ON BACKORDER
From Hive Peak Boulevard
By Danu Marche
Humor Columnist
Published: September 11, 2025
Synapse & Spectacle
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This week, my grocery receipt auditioned for the Library of Congress.
It all started with a $3 purchase — one apple, which, judging by the final paperwork, apparently included a plot summary, author acknowledgments, and three unrelated side quests. The cashier handed me the receipt with both hands, like she was presenting the Magna Carta.
I wasn’t sure whether to fold it, frame it, or find a Sherpa to help me carry it to the car.
Receipts used to be a polite little slip. Now they’re a serialized epic. The one from today’s apple begins on the front with itemized costs, spirals into a coupon novella about tire rotations, then concludes on the back with a QR code that links to “exclusive content.” I’m not sure if that’s a loyalty program or a choose-your-own-adventure.
And the paper quality? Oh, it’s heat-sensitive — meaning it will fade faster than my resolve to “eat healthier” by dinner. Blink, and the total disappears, replaced by ghostly outlines like a Victorian séance transcript.
But the real plot twist comes midway through when my receipt suddenly shifts genres. There’s a random paragraph about sweepstakes eligibility that reads like a dystopian prologue: You may already be a winner, but you must respond before the drawing date, which has already passed.
The squirrel saw it, of course. Today’s sighting: wedged between the curb and the bike rack, turning a crumpled takeout bag over in its paws like it was decoding a treasure map. Every so often it’d pause, give me a long, appraising stare, and then go back to inspecting the grease stains as if they held classified information. I have no idea if it was searching for food or evidence.
Somewhere between “save 10% on patio furniture” and “earn fuel points,” I realized I had emotionally committed to reading this thing to the end. That’s when I hit the section that asked me to rate my shopping “experience.” Which is bold, considering they had just made me carry home the novella equivalent of War and Peace: Produce Edition.
I wonder how historians will interpret these artifacts in a few hundred years. Archaeologists will unearth fossilized receipts and assume we were a civilization obsessed with both 30¢ discounts on yogurt and vague threats about loyalty program expiration.
And yet — I can’t throw them away. What if I need to prove I once bought an apple in August 2025? What if a minor plotline in this paperwork turns out to be a prophecy?
So now they live in a drawer with other questionable life decisions: unmatched Tupperware lids, phone chargers for devices I no longer own, and a single Allen wrench that probably belongs to the IKEA desk I never assembled.
Which brings us full circle — because the last time I opened that drawer, a very different kind of paperwork fell out: an old receipt from 2019. Short, sweet, and only mildly threatening. Back then, you could read one in a single glance instead of devoting an entire evening to it.
But progress doesn’t care about efficiency. It only cares if my apple purchase includes a plot twist, a coupon for window tinting, and the faint implication that my gas rewards are in peril.
So until receipts return to a manageable word count, I’ll be here — making peace with the fact that every $3 I spend might come with required reading.
“If your latest receipt included a cliffhanger, please send chapter summaries.”
©2025 Danu Marche
