My Own Nostalgia

Last night I was on the brink of going insane if I didn't find some kind of task to keep myself busy. Even though the moving company is going to take care of everything, my brain keeps telling me I still have things I need to do. To ease my mind I began by cleaning up my kitchen, which turned into a game of "find the aerosols," since the moving company will not transport them for us. This eventually lead to my favorite part of the evening: the boxes I brought back from my parent's house. What a trip down memory lane! I found all kinds of memorabilia from my high school years, including writing assignments from my senior English class and field charts from when I was in the marching band. Yes, I was a band geek. I played trumpet to keep a family tradition going. Laugh all you want, it paid for college. My husband loves to tease me. I even found my ACT scores. My favorite piece was a notebook of writing assignments. It was almost like a journal of my life in high school. It went from complaints about crowded hallways (I blocked out the fact that they were THAT crowded) to talking about how I met the first and only other guy I have ever loved besides my husband. It had notes between one of my good friends and me, as well as some seriously funny writing assignments I took to the extreme. I got a really good laugh. One of the absolute funniest pieces was a write-up I did on some stupid 80s video we watched one day when we had a subsitute. I wrote that the only think I learned from the video was that people in the 80s had really ugly hair and how to use words like, "gnarly and bitchin'," and that my mother slapped my face for using my new found words. ROFL! (She didn't really.) The thing that amazed me the most was that I got A's on all of my assignments. Some of them were really out there! It was just fun to see that I had a sense of humor even back then.

For some silly reason, I saved all of my marching band charts. I guess its because I remember standing outside in the hot August sun for 12 hours a day for one week to learn our new Fall Show while I carried those charts around and took notes. I would circle where I was on the chart, make an arrow to where I was going next and how many counts I was supposed to take to get there. "Pause for 12 counts, move 8 counts to next chart." I absolutely loved those band days. The kids in band were a different breed of people and we knew how to have fun. We were like a great big family because we spent so much of our lives together. The friends I remember liking most were from band. Its hard to believe that I will only get older and move farther and farther away from those days when I was not quite an adult and felt like I would always be 17. Its funny to look at the pictures of myself and see how much my appearance has changed in 10 years. I didn't think I would ever look a day older than I did back then.

All of my high school memories have been relocated to their own special box to await the day I need a bit of nostalgia again. Somehow three year's worth of memories (including year books and dance pictures) fit into one Staples paper box. I affentionately placed the lid on the box with a slight smile on my face and a warmth in my heart, and then made my way upstairs to shred and organize papers while I remissed over my high school years some more for the rest of the night.