My Ticket Stub Collection

One of my all time favorite films is High Fidelity.  This movie has had a far deeper impact on my life than should be humanly possible.  In it there is a line spoken by John Cusak referring to the vinyl records as “Fetishized possessions.” This is a concept I have always found fascinating to which I can relate.  I have many fetishized possessions, but the one that concerns me now is a collection of movie ticket stubs I have kept since as early as 1998. 

    

      I feel it is important to mention, that I hadn’t chosen it for this reason, but upon leafing through my ticket stub collection, I find that I have one for when I first saw High Fidelity in theaters.  The collection started as an extension of my OCD tenancies.   To this day, I have trouble throwing away receipts and the plastic name tags they stick to the top of DVDs.  Ticket stubs were just another one of those things, but at the same time, they were always different.  Even if it is only seeing a movie, a ticket stub is a physical reminder of a moment in history.  I can look at certain tickets in my collection and have them pull up a memory as vivid as if it had just happened yesterday.  Some of the best points in my life have been punctuated with movies; first dates, birthdays, points both high and low in my life, and the relationships I’ve kept with my friends over the years.

     I can hold my "House of 1000 Corpses"  stub and remember one of the last times I spent with my cousin and good friend before he moved out to Virginia.  Elsewhere on the Spectrum is the ticket to "Freddy got Fingered", which is a reminder of a strange outing with my then girlfriend and my grandmother, who for some reason wanted to see this over the top film.  I often go through my collection and reminisce. It also is an interesting visual guide to the changes made to tickets at the same theater over the years.  Some of these theaters I have been frequenting for at least 10 years.

     Recently Seth, friend and Ponder Couch mate, gave me an album designed specifically for ticket stubs.  It seems like it may have been designed with a larger ticket stub in mind, but I am slowly filling it up and I am enjoying the new way to display and protect my collection.  I may add pictures of the album as it fills out.