i can’t document this but in 6th grade i wrote an essay about the discovery of america that won a prize from my local Olive Garden.
The Olive Garden gave me a medal with C. Columbus on it and treated me and my kin to a free meal. i swear to god this happened.
the Columbus medal from Olive Garden LLC was struck to commemorate the spirit of discovery in the youth of America
I kept it in its cheap plastic case, columbus’s spirit of discovery sleeping eternally in shoddy gray-green foam, occasionally admired
also, postscript, i unironically enjoy olive garden, not the food but the weltschmerz and also more dining should be done in rolling chairs
in conclusion, our world is an impossible theater of braided cruelties and errant love and no one knows what happens when the play is over
crass but vital
Alas, the OG by my house no longer features rolling chairs.