Here it is, opened only seventeen years too late: the time capsule I stuffed, sealed with a few pieces of duct tape, and forgot about for 27 years. It was one of those things where, when my mom told me on the phone she had found it, I had no idea what she was talking about--but when I saw it, the whole thing came back to me. I can remember 10 year old me, the kid in the photo above, thinking "I can't open this for ten years? That'll never happen," like the future was impossible or something. It was, kind of, because we all forgot about it and it didn't get rediscovered until, like I said, seventeen years after I was supposed to crack it.
We saved the opening for my boy's 3rd birthday because my folks all wanted to see it, so that was kind of fun. Here is the last line of the letter I wrote to myself: "Time is of the Essance remember." So true.
That Leia figure is from the very first "pressing" or whatever of Star Wars figures ever. You had to mail away for them. No, I lost her blaster, so she's probably not worth too much. But to me, she's priceless. Obviously. If I really played with her much, I would never have put her in the time capsule. Han Solo and the stormtroopers had important business on my bedroom floor and couldn't sign up for time capsule duty. But Leia did, and now she has survived the years looking fabulous.
The letters from my parents to me were pretty priceless, too. They were only two or more years older than I am now when they wrote them, and it's, I don't know, impossible to describe what it feels like to read their speculations about my future.
One cute excerpt from my mom's letter: "Last night at our second baseball game, and our second loss (she was my team's coach--she knew nothing about baseball except how to make everyone play equally), you threw a picture book throw from way past second base to Mitchell (my best friend) to get a guy out at home plate. I will forever remember that throw. Your coach screamed and jumped up and down hysterically. I'm afraid I did show my prejudice at that point."
Ahhhhhhh, Time. It's a funny thing.
4 comments:
You wrote "Time is of the Essence remember" when you were ten? Wow.
Well, I spelled it wrong. I think I did a lot of repeating things that I didn't understand. Has anything changed, really? No, probably not.
That's nothing, I wrote the entire third canto of Paradise Lost in my time capsule.
I smiled so hard at this.
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