Strange Souvenir: Guest Post by Jay Kasperbauer
As a child visiting Washington D.C., I watched a boy, attending a field trip from another school, stand patiently in line to check out at a gift shop. He wore a puffy yellow Hilfiger coat, though the coat wasn’t so much being worn, at least not customarily, but instead hung by the hood from the back of his head like a coat hook. Shifting his weight on either foot, he proudly held onto a glass paperweight with a 3D-etching of the White House. When the time finally came for him to pay, he placed the chunk of glass on the counter, now thoroughly blemished by his fingerprints, and stared at the lady who fervently clicked the keys of a cash register opposite him.
“Thirty-five dollar and eighty cent,” the cashier said in a heavy accent that I didn’t recognize. The boy pulled cash from a crumpled envelope in his pocket. I scoffed quietly to myself from the other side of the gift shop and continued scanning a kiosk for a license plate that displayed my name. I could only find James or Jason. Typical. Everywhere inside the narrow Pennsylvania Avenue gift shop was memorabilia dedicated to our nation’s capital: postcards with aerial photographs of the National Mall, chintzy plastic replicas of the Washington Monument, white t-shirts with black typewritten lettering that said, “I *big red heart* D.C.,” and no shortage of chocolate gold coins with faces of Presidents past.
This futile experience during the quintessential junior-high field trip sponsored by the school left quite an impression. If I considered the trip a joke, it was probably misguided and really only a result of the sudden awareness that my rural community was seriously removed from the heart of our broad and powerful governing institutions. This pathetic feeling intensified later on in the field trip when I was humbled by the bustle of our global commerce epicenter, New York City. What was laughable was the apparent ignorance of most children (not to mention my own) at the historical significance of what we were witnessing in a matter of a few days. The kids from school could hardly bear having their attention pulled from the joy in bunking with each other, in-room HBO, unbridled intake of pepperoni pizza and Pepsi, and a sizable stipend for souvenirs. Sweaty public-school boys, ripe with hormones, saw opportunities to court otherwise overlooked girls from school, gifting them white Puka shell necklaces while young girls imprinted the film of disposable cameras with pictures of themselves in the foreground of our nation’s essential monuments.
“The nation’s capital? Sounds crowded,” I said to my mother about the trip beforehand. Reluctant to go, not because I thought I had nothing to learn from Washington, D.C. (that only came later) but rather, because, I had never spent more than two nights away from my family and was afraid that I might be forced to face heartache. A bit more coddled than my peers, I couldn’t possibly endure appearing homesick in front of my classmates. But in the end, I went on the trip and as I recall, my decision not to back out was made just a day or two prior to departing. Then, the stuffy coach with one single “bathroom” came and lugged me and all the other privileged, ungrateful little peewees away. I still remember the electric trepidation that I felt in the predawn boarding the bus, taking a seat on the bright-confetti-pattern cloth seat, loading a burned CD into my bright-red Sony Walkman, all the while doing my best not to think about my family. I pressed a button and Beyoncé played into my naïve little ears. The bus emerged from the parking lot and our bodies ceaselessly bounced and swayed in unison as we rolled along the interstate. Without stopping for rest, we first arrived at Arlington National Cemetery. Then came Washington, D.C.
When the children from school were finished violating the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the chaperones herded everyone together and led our bitty trampling feet across Lafayette Square, toward the area clustered with gift shops. By now, I was feeling unbearably precocious as I wondered around the stores of our nation’s capital, eager to return home and demonstrate the knowledge I now had.
Looking back at the visit to the shops, the impartiality of the official bric-à-brac was notable. Nothing that was on display represented anything other than innocent, American glory. Our nation had just endured the deadliest terror attack in all of its history. George W. Bush was the president. It seemed politics hadn’t yet become nearly as dividedly partisan as the era in which we now live. I’m left wondering, what’s in our nation’s gift shops now?
It’s present day and a child on a field trip walks into a gift store on Pennsylvania Avenue. Immediately, she confronts a wellspring of memorabilia adorned with the president’s name in bold letters and the year “2024” beside it. She is puzzled by the significance of the year. But … it’s only 2020? Bright-red hats embroidered with a popular slogan tower high. Bobbleheads depicting our nation’s leader, with emblematic wavy hair and carrot skin, sit in a row ten figurines deep. Items previously considered patriotic, formerly embellished cleverly and subtly, have now advanced into jingoistic territory. Infant onesies tout free speech. Hoodies are covered in stars, stripes, guns and skulls; icons of proud nationalism push the edges of sewn hems on cotton tees imported from Honduras. Even flags are bigger, colors more vivid. Overwhelmed by the inexhaustible excess, the child turns and bails. She decides that owning something from the contemporary gift shop of our country seems to reveal the ideology of an individual. To the young girl, her notion becomes an everlasting souvenir.
It’s expected for anyone elder to reminisce—to be nostalgic about an era when “life was simpler.” But, one can’t ignore how current events differ from past ones. The blunt division we now experience, acute like the edge of a knife, has jabbed its way into the lives of today’s children and massacred their impression of civics. Lest we forget, the shifting (dis) accord concerning pivotal moments that shaped this country’s history and the monuments erected in their memory. How will the youth of today interpret the history written on the plaques of memorials and conveyed to them by our country’s tour guides? What kinds of souvenirs will they bring home from our nation’s gift shops?
I don’t remember what souvenirs, if any, I brought home with me, but I do recall feeling especially refined and with no hesitation I remember how the lyrics of Beyoncé pervaded my mind when she sang through my headphones as the bus left, homebound:
“Such a funny thing for me to try and explain,
how I’m feeling and my pride is the one to blame,
‘cause I know I don’t understand,
just how your love can do what no one else can,
got me lookin’ so crazy right now, your love’s,
got me lookin’ so crazy right now …”
Jay Kasperbauer is a young creative writer who wishes to reinforce community through composition. Several of his brief essays, both nonfiction and fiction, have been published nationwide. His debut novel, Perlie, was released by Inkwater Press Publishing in 2020. He resides in Des Moines, Iowa, with his spouse and two dogs. Presently, he is working on his second novel.
Check out three other guest essays by What’s Good Project contributing writers: