Thursday, May 19, 2011

i want you to keep everything

it's amazing what you find when you clean your room. really clean it, not just doing the top three-quarters of the mess. it's what slips into that last quarter among the piles of batteries that may or may not be dead and old pens that are missing their caps that can really surprise you. uncovering all the hidden reminders of days so long past that the memories are fading can really put into light just how much you've changed over the years. i've been living in this room for almost a decade, give or take a year or two, so there are many years worth of stuff piled up in here. i'm a pretty sentimental person, and end up keeping a lot of junk most people would throw away. i am also a major pack rat (a characteristic i like to pretend i don't have) which means even more stuff. going through it all was just... weird.

for example, in a pile of old papers from high school (including every math test from tenth grade forward. even i had to raise an eyebrow at that one) i found this math packet that was half solved by me and half solved by this kid i used to have the biggest crush on for years. he had filled it out one day on the bus in a confusing, rather pointless story that i'm not gonna write out here. but anyway, i haven't seen this kid since our graduation in 'oh six (actually, i think i might have seen him on campus a couple of weeks ago but i'm not sure) or really talked to him aside from a couple of facebook messages a year or so back. i kept a packet just because it had his writing on it, i could pick him out of a crowd from a mile away, and now he's just not in my life at all. and i don't even notice his absence. like a lot of people i used to know. a lot of high school memories were surfacing today. 

i also realized that i suck at sending cards. i have an entire pile of thank you and get well cards, signed with little notes in addressed envelopes, that i just never got around to sending. talk about a waste of money. i can't even remember when some of them are from but judging from my handwriting they are nowhere near recent.

oh, and looking at how my handwriting has changed on all the papers was interesting. the fact that i had handwritten essays in junior year surprised me too. so did finding a paper that didn't make me want to scratch my eyes out by rereading it. that rarely happens. (there's this essay i wrote junior year of high school on gone with the wind that i was obsessed with. i thought it was the greatest thing ever written. i can't even look at it now without wanting to take a red pen to it.)

there were magazines i had saved because of some actor/actress/singer on the cover that i couldn't care any less about now.

there were things i had lost years ago like my mini stapler from my freshman year at college and the silly putty i bought for my brothers when they were four and five. they are now nine and ten. i found my high school diploma and tons of old hallmark cards, some not even for me. 

and i kept every. single. thing any kid ever drew me. i have tons of stuff from my brothers from over the years, but also drawings and notes from the kids i used to substitute for and girls on my bus. it's crazy. 

there were lists of songs i had wanted to download, half of them i never got around to, and statements from my old bank that doesn't even exist anymore. 

there's just so much stuff and it's taking forever to get through it all because i have to stop and read everything. 

*I Want You to Keep Everything - These United States

9 comments:

  1. anonymous hippopotamusMay 19, 2011 at 8:51 PM

    and you judge me for being a pack rat!!! hhmph!

    and isn't it depressing going through stuff and reliving the memories?? or is that just me? lately i've been understanding why Mommy hates looking at old pics. When I look at old pics now I get really really depressed and this sense of hopelessness overwhelms me. Its awful...and it happens most when looking at old pics of Zazu. :|

    oh and hallmark cards that are mine..please keep..don't throw them away. Please :)

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  2. i'm a big fan of sadness so that sad nostalgic feeling you get is right up my alley. and i wasn't gonna throw em away stupid. i'm gonna leave it with daddy with the rest of your stuff and then you can get them when you come back?

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  3. anonymous hippopotamusMay 21, 2011 at 5:11 PM

    OMG NO! do no leave them with daddy...are you serious?! he's like the nosiest person ever....where do you think i get my nosiness?? he'll probably read them...i hope you're joking.

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  4. of course i'm joking stupid. i'll take them with my stuff and you can either leave em with me forever or get them if/when you move back here or whatever.

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  5. My solutio - just put everything back in the cupboard and "do it tomorrow"

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  6. lol that's pretty much what i've ended up doing. after one productive day i've just been sitting around saying, "well, i did a lot that day. i'll just do the rest tomorrow."

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  7. of course i got hung up trying to figure out who's the guy from the second paragraph -_- and then i remembered when you were trying to pass the bio book to that kid who i don't remember at all except that he took ap bio with us, and then you fell off the stool. omg i was so mean but anytime anyone slipped/fell i died of laughter. do you remember when alia was so excited to go to the water fountain by the security guard desk, she ran, slammed through the double green doors and then slipped on the water that leaked from the fountain? she slid a couple feet and landed on her butt facing the boys leaving through their doors. ha.
    and when ahreej almost drowned bc she can't swim? she jumped into the pool in that field trip, thinking she was tall enough for the 6 ft, and she just sank slowly. hahaha and yusra was on the only one who noticed, so she poked around with her foot, and pulled ahreej out using her toes. looooool

    anyways, i went through a box of high school stuff too. i teared up a lot. i have a whole scrapbook of memories that i made in tenth grade.

    and when i read our first story, i gag a lot. it's unreadable from how bad the writing was and how sappy the love story was. i think reading the story in little segments in the way we wrote it was perfect, bc you get small doses of drama, but as a book it's a complete disaster.

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  8. did you figure out who the guy was? if you need a hint, he was khaled abusalem. and yeah that yousef kid from ap bio. i wonder what happened to him. i feel like he just stopped existing after that class was over. did he speak english? i can't remember. and loool at the other memories. good times... high school was great.

    lol yeah the story is just terrible. i don't think i've read it from start to finish like all together since the summer after senior year. occasionally i'll go through and read parts and laugh at the shampoo-commercial-ness and the hospital visits every other page. awful as it is, though, i still love it. i haven't read the second one in a million years. maybe i should do that tomorrow while anisah is in class.

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  9. LOOOOOL he was such a remus.
    the yusuf kid seems like a figment of imagination, created just to cause a little drama for the 50 minute segment of the day.

    i'm about to read the second one right now since i have insomnia and there's time to kill before work.

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