Buried Treasure

My mom has started to clean out the room I grew up in, and since she didn't want to throw anything away without my OK, over the past few weeks I've gotten to go through some of the bits and pieces of my life from age 6 to age 25. I knew I was a pack rat, so I knew I'd find a lot of junk (the sugar seagull from a birthday party at the Lion House was one of my favorites), but I also thought I'd find some real treasures. I was right. Among the honor roll certificates and girls camp memorabilia and teeth that the tooth fairy let me keep after she paid me for them was something that showed where my priorities really were:

Yep, I was campaigning for the rabbit so he could eat Trix because I was a "nice kid." And that wasn't the only treasure from a cereal box I found; there were lots of toys and stickers and other stuff I thought was really cool at the time. Thankfully, there wasn't any cereal (but there were a few old lollipops—eww).

Then there were the things that showed me just how much I've forgotten, like a stack of cards with physics equations written on them.

There were about 100 of these, and I used to be able to tell you what all of those symbols meant, what the equations could do for you, and when to use them. Now I have no clue, except that the ones in the picture have something to do with magnetic force. It's not that I need physics equations in my everyday life, but I spent a lot of time memorizing those things, and it's rather sad to realize all that knowledge has disappeared into the unreachable depths of my brain matter.

But then there was the really cool stuff that got put in the "to keep forever" box:

Among other things, that box has some of my old skating costumes, my first drill team sweatshirt, the corsage I got at my aunt's wedding (I thought I was so grown up!), the clothes I wore when I ran the Olympic torch, and a few belts my dad made for me when I was little. There's even one of my dad's Santa letters. He wrote us each a letter every Christmas, giving us advice and telling us what great kids we were, signed it Santa, and put it in our stocking. For a lot of years, I didn't listen much to my dad (we were way too much alike and way too stubborn, and I was a stupid teenager), but I always listened to Santa. Reading that letter made me feel closer to my dad again, and that was a real treasure, even if it only lasted a few minutes.