Memories, like fingerprints, are slowly raising

Memories, in the corner of my mind
Misty, water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures....

Anyway,
The last time I was in Kansas City I brought home what I lovingly refer to as my "box of stuff". It's basically all the junk I decided to keep throughout the years. It started out as a shoe box and has grown to fill about half of a foot-locker (my old boy scout foot locker, surprisingly, is still around). I have been on vacation since Friday, so today I decided to take a trip down memory lane. The thing about going through a box of old stuff is that you are never sure what you will run into. Some things brought a smile to my face. Some things brought up old bad memories. Some things made me yearn for days gone by and the excitement of youth. Some things made me chuckle at the naivete and earnestness of my earlier days. Some things made me realize that memory is fleeting in a very concrete sense. Some things made me think, I can't believe I actually kept that!

Besides the usual assortment of love letters, matchbooks, birthday cards, concert tickets, and movie stubs I found some interesting keepsakes. Here are some of the more unusual ones:

1. an old, cheap digital watch that I wore in high school....it was still running! (that's at least 13-14 years old!)
2. My fabulous clip on tie that I had to wear at McDonald's
3. Nametags from McD's, QuickTrip, and various other jobs
4. A matchbox car with a key that locks the doors that Sean gave me on my 16th birthday
5. 2 hood ornaments that I ripped off cars in my hoodlum days (one was a buick, the other was a mercury cougar....I know...classy)
6. My favorite watch from when I was 18 (the crystal is completely smashed and I have no recall of how that happened)
7. Numerous names and phone numbers scribbled on bar napkins and paper (I had zero recall of about 80% of these people)......see what I mean about memory being fleeting?
8. My high school class ring
9. A postcard from Sean's vacation to Florida....he was 14 or 15 at the time (point of interest....he saw lots of SKATERZ that were good at ollies but stinky at bonelesses)
10. A letter Aaron sent me when I was at college in Kirksville that should have been confiscated and ended with the arrest of either one or both of us, but didn't.
11. A toy cannon that I bought at Fort Osage I think. That was when I was about 10-12 years old.
12. Another letter from Aaron with autographed pictures from "uate-a-my-poopa" as well as poorly photoshopped pictures of Christina Applegate
13. A tikki necklace my girlfriend bought me in Mexico...I was 17.
14. A ton of lighters, both standard and zippo. I have the lighter that was with me when the phrase "man-camp" first came into inception. It was also the night of the wilderbeast. It's got holographic little circles all over it and is color changing from yellow to orange to blue.
15. I also have many Total lighters, which reminded me of the phat life we lived off an expense card.
16. Aaron's college graduation schedule
17. A fantastic Captain Morgan's keychain
18. Several killer pewter statues of wizards and dragons from high school (I shuddered that I actually valued these things)
19. A piece of paper that I wrote on for a couple of hours while under the influence of a very strong substance circa 1996 (It was complete gibberish, mostly Butthole Surfer lyrics)
20. My rainbow colored rastafarian hat, as well as "the captain's hat"

Wow,
What the hell was I thinking back then?

That was just a small list of the things I came across. The best stuff was letters and old cards that people had given me over the years. I went back and read most of them. The sad part is that I can hardly remember things they mentioned in these letters. It's funny that things that mean so much to you at one point in your life are almost completely erased from memory later on down the road. It was still fun to try to piece together what may have been occuring at that point in history.

So, I took this opportunity to add all the "stuff" over the last two years to the box and tucked it back into the closet, not to be opened for another 5-10 years. Kinda like an ever growing time capsule.