In any move, a person is likely to stumble upon a myriad of strange and forgotten objects of yesteryear. As C and I contemplate never eventually selling our home, I am terrified by what memorabilia might be unearthed from our basement storage and dragged from our closet shelves.
Some examples of what I fear I will discover in the Great Task:
- Bundles of letters - some received from old boyfriends and others written to imaginary ones
Dear Guy Reading This, if we go back far enough, this could be you. How does that make you feel? Should I even ask? Probably not.
- Lion King ticket stubs from 1994
- Lion King stuffed animal tags from 1994. And 1995. And 1996, and so on. You probably slept better not knowing that I was playing with plush toys after studying for Algebra II.
- Yearbooks/Annuals:
"M, Thanks for a great year! You are ________ !!! (Blank filled by descriptions such as: awesome, really fun, neat, antisocial, a real downer, or awkward and you make me feel uncomfortable). Love, Your 8th grade Classmate Teacher.
- Lisa Frank stickers
- Crayons (remember, since we don't have kids, we have no real use for these, unless we were to own coloring books, which would be kind of ridiculous for people our age)
- Coloring Books
- 43 chapstick tubes. This is insane. Once I manage to collect them all, it could take me a legitimate 15 year period to use them, if that's even safe.
Is there a chapstick "best by" date?
A shelf life?
A half-life?
As a friend's little girl would say, I've got a problem with purchasing far too many "lips".
- Polaroids of my 13-year old sister in her green bathing suit, her hair teased out like Jessie from Saved By the Bell - This is the only artifact I will be happy - no, wait - thrilled to dig up
- Happy Nation by Ace of Base on cassette tape
- "No Detention" awards from ninth through eleventh grade. As you can imagine, not getting this award my senior year was a real victory for my social life. A fact that becomes especially evident after reading this list.
At this point you should be able to understand the rumble in my stomach and anxiety fluttering in my chest as I contemplate picking through rubbermaid containers I haven't seen since moving out of my parents' place. They were glowing at least as bright as I was on my wedding day, I assumed, because I was marrying a spectacular man. However, as I look back, it's equally possible that they were just that excited to get all of my junior high flotsam out from under the shelter of their roof.
And now it's under mine, equally untouched. So I press on, unwilling to let the terror keep me up at night, but also equally unwilling to face it.
I wonder if Goodwill takes chapstick donations. You think?
