Memory Lane

I'm in need of a filing cabinet, so I went to my parent's basement where I have one stuffed with stuff from school, Kindergarten through senior year.  I had planned on cleaning it out at their house, but dad said, "Oh no.  You can take it home and clean it out, I don't want any of that stuff staying here."  My argument was that it would be easier to load in the car if it had less stuff.  He didn't buy it and just said, "Pick up that side, let's go."  I had to laugh.  I'm a paper saver,my mom is a paper saver, and she got it from her mom who was also a paper saver, and I know it drives him crazy...but he does his fair share of saving, its just not papers like us. =)

So today I had Stony help me get it out of the car and set it in front of the fireplace.  (We both have colds and didn't have much energy to do too much today so this was the perfect activity.)  It was so interesting pulling stuff out and flipping through it.  Realistically, I probably could have just taken it out of the drawers and tossed it in the trash, but I wanted to see if there was anything that I still needed to save.  I read daily journal entries from early elementary school.  Many of these entries read, "I got in a fight with my sister over a stuffed animal yesterday..." Or "BJ and I played in the forest til it got dark..." Or something about our pets.  It's funny the things that are really important to you when you are little. 

Then I read a few stories I wrote in middle school.  One would have thought I was a very disturbed girl.  But I think what it was, was that I was so insecure that I didn't know how to deal with it or act around people.  So I made up stories about girls who were much worse off than me.  Wierd.  Good thing middle school doesn't last forever.

Then I found my math notebooks from high school.  Why would I save those?  Because at one time I thought I could go back through them and re-learn stuff I didn't really get.  I didn't have to flip 2 pages into those before I tossed them out. Then I went through my portfolios from high school.  Gosh, I feel like I was a lot smarter then...and way more boring.  Well maybe I wasn't boring, but some of the stuff we had to do seemed boring.  I even found a page in one of my notebooks where I was practicing writing a note to excuse myself from a class and signing my mom's name...all that practice made me really good at forging her signature, which has actually come in very handy from time to time as an adult.  It was interesting too, seeing the difference in my work all through-out high school. 

It was kind of fun taking a trip down memeory lane today.  Each page I looked at reminded me of the class, the people, the teachers...  But my dad would be proud; out of 2 drawers of stuff, I only save a pile about 4 inches tall.  Memory lane will be much shorter next time I go down it.