Boxes full of history, forgotten
On one of her trips home while I was in Iraq Katie brought back some of the stuff that's been stuck under the stairs in my parents' basement for about three or four years. On a whim I decided to find out what was in those boxes tonight.
The easiest stuff was the toys. Opened and unopened. Covered in dust. Hopefully I can make some shelf space when we move and I can get them dusted off and out of the boxes.
Then the sentimental stuff. A cedar box from a trip to Lake of the Ozarks with mom when I was 10 or 11. It was locked by some tiny locks with keys long missing so Katie went to work at opening them while I was looking through the rest. There was another box that was some kind of jewelry holder with my confirmation ring (worn once I think) and a ton of movie ticket stubs. When Katie got the cedar box open all it had were some fancy stones (hematite and something else), some foreign money, and a magnifying glass. Apparently I had plans to become some international geologist. Or European rock investigator.
Then there were pictures. Old pictures of people whose names I can't remember and ex-girlfriends. And some girl who's playing my gameboy. After those was the yearbook from my junior year. I only have yearbooks from my freshman year and my junior year because I was new at Springfield High in my sophomore year and still didn't know anybody by the end of it and I graduated early in my senior year and never picked up my yearbook at the end. Lots of people in there that I had forgotten about.
Finally there was the sketchbook and flimsy folders crammed full of papers. That's where the pain was hiding. I was a depressed kid. I was angst incarnate. I'd forgotten about that too. If I had done something stupid and people were to psychoanalyze what I just found, I might have been institutionalized. I had no idea I was so melodramatic.