Harris Vexley
I walked into Martha's general store last Tuesday morning with my thermos and a shopping list written on the back of an envelope—same as I've done every Tuesday since the first Bush administration—and found myself surrounded by what I can only describe as a vintage clothing convention.
Seven people. All under thirty. All wearing clothes that looked simultaneously brand new and forty years old. One young woman was photographing a thermos on the counter. Not photographing with a thermos. Photographing the thermos itself. Like it was a museum piece.
I recognized the model immediately. Stanley 1.1 quart classic. Same one I've had since 1991. Except hers didn't have any dents, and mine looks like it survived three tours of duty and a domestic dispute.
The price tag was still attached to hers: $87.
I paid $9 for mine. At Sears. When Sears still existed.
"Excuse me," I said, trying to reach the coffee pot without disrupting what appeared to be a photo shoot for Thermoses Quarterly.
A young man with an extremely deliberate mustache—the kind that takes more maintenance than my entire grooming routine—turned to me with the expression you'd expect if I'd just materialized from a time portal.
"Oh my god," he said. "Are you living the analog lifestyle?"
I blinked at him through my slightly smudged wire-rims. "I'm trying to get coffee."
"No, but look at you." He gestured at my general existence like I was an art installation. "The vintage thermos. The handwritten list. The—wait, is that a pocket watch?"
"It's a chain for my reading glasses."
"Brilliant."
The Trend I Didn't Know I Was
Turns out, I'm fashionable. At 58. For the first time in my life.
According to the assembled youth of Waterbury, 2026 is "the year of analog living." It's a movement. There are hashtags. CNN reports that sales of craft kits jumped 86% last year, with another 30-40% increase expected this year. Film photography is back. Vinyl records are having a renaissance. People are buying fountain pens on purpose.
I've been using a fountain pen since 1994 because I bought a box of twelve at a yard sale for three dollars and I'm not wasteful. Still have seven left.
Apparently, this makes me a pioneer.
The young woman with the pristine thermos looked at my actual thermos—scarred, dented, held together by stubbornness and what I suspect is sheer molecular confusion—and asked if it was "vintage or vintage-inspired."
"It's from 1991," I said.
"From the actual year 1991?"
"I was there when I bought it."
She gasped. Actually gasped. Like I'd just announced I'd discovered fire.
"It's authentic," she whispered to her friends.
I wanted to point out that "authentic" just means "old and still working" but they seemed so excited that I didn't have the heart.
The Great Irony
I got my coffee—terrible, as always; Martha's been making the same weak pot since Carter—and settled into my usual spot by the window. The analog lifestyle crew continued their discussion, and I couldn't help but overhear.
They were planning their "unplugging." Screen-free Sundays. Digital detoxes. One woman had a twelve-month roadmap for reducing her social media use, complete with milestones and accountability checkpoints.
Another was learning to knit. Using YouTube tutorials.
Let me repeat that: She was learning an analog hobby by watching digital videos about it.
Martha caught my eye from behind the counter. She's been running this store for thirty-seven years. She's seen trends come and go—the low-fat craze of the '90s, the Atkins thing in the 2000s, that year everyone suddenly needed coconut oil for everything including their cars. She was smiling the way you smile when you're watching someone try to teach a cat to swim.
The irony wasn't lost on these kids, to their credit. One of them actually said, "I know it's weird that we're organizing our analog lifestyle on Instagram, but how else do you build community?"
I thought about the thirty years I'd been coming to this store. Same time, same day, same terrible coffee. The way Jerry saves me the local paper before it sells out. How Martha asks about my boys without me having to bring them up. The community that built itself slowly, like ice forming on a lake—you don't watch it happen, but one day it's solid enough to walk on.
"You just show up," I said. "Regularly. In person."
She wrote that down in her leather journal. Which probably cost more than my first car.
Distressed Aesthetic
By the time I'd gathered my groceries—real milk, bread from the bakery down the street, cheese that comes in blocks like God intended—the group had moved on to discussing their favorite "offline hobbies."
Jigsaw puzzles were mentioned. Knitting. Bread baking. One fellow had just bought a typewriter for $240 to "reconnect with tactile writing."
I have a typewriter. It's in my basement, next to my old skis and several boxes I've been meaning to sort through since Clinton's second term. I paid $15 for it at a yard sale in 1996. It seemed expensive.
As I approached the counter, Martha rang up my purchases with barely contained amusement.
"You're trendy now, Harris," she muttered.
"I don't feel trendy."
"That's what makes it authentic." She bagged my groceries in paper—the store's been using paper since Eisenhower, long before it was environmentally conscious. "Your thermos is probably worth a fortune now. I saw one online marked 'distressed aesthetic.'"
I looked at my thermos. Each dent has a name. The big one is from the Ice Fishing Disaster of 2003. The scrape along the bottom is from being dragged behind my truck for three miles. The crater near the cap is from when my youngest son—he was seven—dropped it off the porch trying to bring me coffee.
It's not distressed. It's experienced.
"Mine's too distressed," I said.
"That's not how this works," Martha replied. "More authentic damage means higher price. They want the story without the time."
And there it was. The thing that had been bothering me since I walked in.
Skipping to the End
Look, I don't blame these kids. They're exhausted. They grew up with smartphones surgically attached to their palms. They've been optimized and content-ified and engagement-maxed since before they could vote. The digital detox trend is real because the fatigue is real.
But they want to skip to the end. They want the patina without the years. The wisdom without the winters. The dented thermos without the three decades of Tuesday mornings.
I don't have a smartphone because I never needed one, not because I made a brave stand against technology. I use a paper map because I bought it in 1989 and it still shows where the roads are. I write shopping lists on envelopes because envelopes are free if you're already getting mail.
It's not a philosophy. It's just... life. Unoptimized. Unbranded. Undocumented.
Apparently, this is now revolutionary.
The Photo Shoot
As I headed for the door, the photographer stopped me.
"Could we get a picture? For our analog lifestyle documentation project?"
I paused. "You want to document analog living by taking pictures?"
"With film," he said, like this solved the paradox.
I thought about saying no. But he was earnest, and you can't be cruel to earnest. Earnest is how we got the Hoover Dam and the polio vaccine. You have to respect earnest, even when it's confused.
So I stood by the window while they posed me. Someone adjusted my collar. Someone else told me to "look contemplative."
I looked like I always look: mildly confused, slightly rumpled, patiently waiting for whatever's happening to be over.
The photographer clicked the shutter. Then did it three more times.
"Perfect," he said. "That's going to be so authentic."
I nodded, picked up my groceries, and walked home. Half a mile. No podcast, no phone call, no GPS telling me to turn left onto the road I've lived on for forty-three years.
Just boots on snow. Breath in cold air. Coffee at the right temperature.
Behind me, through the window, they were probably already planning their next authentic experience. Choosing which vintage item to acquire. Which handicraft to learn via tutorial. Which piece of slow living to schedule into their optimized calendars.
I'm not judging. Not really.
They'll get there eventually. You can't buy your way to the end of becoming. You just start, keep going, and let the dents accumulate.
Thirty years from now, their thermoses might look like mine.
And by then, I figure, I'll probably be hopelessly outdated again.
Which suits me fine.
Epilogue: Influencer, Apparently
Two weeks later, Martha sent me a text. My grandson had to help me open it—took fifteen minutes because my flip phone isn't really designed for links and he kept getting distracted.
It was a photo. Me in the general store. Soft light. Thoughtful expression. Battle-scarred thermos.
The caption: "Met this incredible human who's been living the analog lifestyle for DECADES. No social media. No smartphone. Just pure, intentional existence. He didn't even know it was a trend. That's the goal. 💚 #analoglife #authenticity #2026yearofanalog"
47,000 likes.
I stared at it, then handed the phone back.
"You're famous, Grandpa," he said.
"I'm the same as I was yesterday."
"Yeah, but now people know about it."
Which is, I suppose, the entire problem in miniature. The idea that a thing only matters once it's been seen. That living only counts if it's documented. That authenticity requires an audience.
I still don't know what an influencer is. My grandson tried to explain. I nodded at appropriate intervals and understood nothing.
Then, because it was Tuesday, I made dinner the same way I've made it every Tuesday for thirty years: from scratch, without a recipe, using ingredients that don't have their own apps.
The analog lifestyle.
Also known as: living.
The kids will figure it out eventually. Or they won't. Either way, my thermos will still hold coffee, and hot coffee will stay hot.
That remains the entire point.
