I'm Twenty!

Ah, my twentieth birthday. 

This is a delightful home made pin that I wore stuck on my shirt for the whole evening.  Jess threw me a party at her apartment and all of the usual suspects were there.  Also, I was in a sling because that was the decline of my bad shoulder.  I was also wearing a cheesy cowboy hat that I thought I could pull off, and so did my mother since she was the one who gave it to me for my birthday.

Typical binge drinking occurred.  Many many cans of cheap light beer followed by somehow returning to our dorm.  I recall that EB and I had managed to lock ourselves out of said dorm and I was rolling around on the floor outside of it yelling "I'M TWENTY!" until the RA came and let us in.  "I'M TWENTY!" became the rallying cry of my clarinet section a year later and I'm not sure how.

Also, I was wearing this on top of my cowboy hat:

Trendy Bitch

Around the time I was a senior in high school, I started to shed some of my anti-cool cool ways.  I let some of my more mainstream friends highlight my hair for me instead of letting the summer sun do it naturally.  I started buying jeans and khakis at the gap rather than wool old man pants from Goodwill.  I would wear a collared shirt under a sweater instead of a long sleeved shirt under a t-shirt with a local ska-punk band screen-printed on it.  I put on the occasional mascara and socks that matched and didn't have weird stuff all over them.  I liked pop and rap music. I enjoyed social outings that involved beer or driving around aimlessly with groups of people I only kind of knew but liked well enough. 

 I received this hand crafted jewelry message from a friend who wasn't quite there yet.  I think it was supposed to be funny, but looking back on it, maybe she was just jealous I wanted to go out and do stuff instead of do stuff on the internet.  Wait...  Crap!  The circle of life!

Fact

I don't think I need this ribbon to prove this to any of you.  I don't think I need to advertise it, either.

I'm pretty sure Ben was handing these out at a party at Jon's in college once.  I have a vague memory of a lot of girls wearing them.  Most of the memories from Jon's are kind of vague though.

Zoning Out

I worked at Target for a hot minute when I was 21.  This is my name tag.

There were aspects of that job that were miserable.  Team stretches and huddles, my direct supervisor, the customers and the fact that all of the Target stores have one thermostat and it's in Minnesota (honest truth) are the few that come immediately to mind.  However, sometimes I liked it.  I was all for zoning.  It started three hours before closing and you were assigned an area of the store and you had to make sure every single item was correctly on the shelf.  I worked hardgoods which is everything that isn't clothes.  If  you were lucky and got assigned something like yard and auto, most of those boxes are big and zoning takes no time.  However, if you were the poor sap assigned to health and beauty, you had to start zoning as soon as you showed up.  That's when it would take a turn for horror.

You ever stop and look at how tiny boxes of toothpaste and vitamins and eyeliner are?  Yeah.  Somebody gets paid to make sure they are all in a perfect little line of the shelf.  I was almost always that person because there were no other girls on the hardgoods team and for some convoluted reason, they felt it would be more interesting for me to line up bottles of shampoo than it would be for boys to do so.  

Newsflash.  Whether it's office supplies, dishes, towels, Nerf guns, seasonal items, cans of soup, bars of soap, xbox games, barbies, motor oil, free weights, basketballs, duvets or boxes of cereal, it all sucks to spend hours on end setting in neat straight lines.  Whether you're a boy or a girl.  It all becomes colored shapes that need to fit evenly and most of the time, don't.

Vanity Plates

Despite the fact that I am into cycling and I'm very tacky about it (my mountain bike has a custom eye-searing, hot pink paint job with a glitter top coat),  I thought I could let my novelty bicycle license plates see the recycling bucket.

Let's check these out.

I have never been to Nebraska, Missouri, Wyoming (I think the "Big Shot" is Wyoming, I already threw it out so I can't remember) or Arkansas.  I do not know where these came from, nor do I have any particular attachment to Nebraska, Missouri, Wyoming or Arkansas.  Also, I'm sorry for Arkansas that theirs is "Hog Wild".  That seems unfortunate somehow.

I set the California plate aside because it seemed festive, but I chucked the others.  Also, I have the firm memory and pride of being the D.A.R.E Essay contest winner for my class to keep forever so I don't need this license plate.  That's sarcasm in case any of you were thinking for a minute there that I was being honest.  I already showed you the clothespin.  I am beyond thinking I was cool.

Although I'm struggling with the Violence part of the D.A.R.E. plate.  I know it stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education (hello, essay contest winner), but now it says violence too?  Shouldn't it be D.V.A.R.E.?  I guess that's not catchy enough.  I remember even at 12 I thought it was lame and something like an after school special.  It was even taught by Officer Quimby.  Whose last name is Quimby other than the guy from Inspector Gadget?  

Jack And The Beanstalk!

I hope it is clear by these two photographs how clever this home made craft is.

This was not for school.  This was a for-fun art I made at home.  I would love to tell you to look at the fine detail and see that this must have taken hours on end, but there is no detail.  I clearly did it in pencil first and then added the Crayola Washable marker afterwards (wouldn't want to make a mistake) and I didn't even try that hard on the house.  No chimney or anything.  No other allusions to the story, now cow in the distance, no angry grandmother, was she the grandmother?

I never really cared about the Jack and the Beanstalk story.  I thought it was kind of lame.  That perplexes me as to why I would have been compelled to make this tricky surprise foldable art.  Frankly, I pretty much always thought of Mario and the beanstalks in that.  My sister and I did make a lot of Nintendo art.  Becky used to draw pictures of Rupees and I would be Link and fight my way around the downstairs looking for them.  Maybe I got bored of Mario Art and decided I would make another beanstalk art (I can't think of any other than the two?).

My motives aside, I also felt I should keep this whack craft mixed in with all my other sentimental items.  I will let Jack climb to the recycling plant at the top of the beanstalk today.

Two Dolla Dolla Bill

If by Stuff I'm Getting Rid Of, I mean stuff I'm putting in the bank and spending, then yes.

I found this two dollar bill in one of the boxes.  The back of two dollar bills is pretty cool and I wish all of our money looked that ornate.  I guess it does, but in a more boring way.  I used to think two dollar bills were cool and rare and extravagant in some way and I associated them with my dad cause he was always teaching me about neat things that most people overlook.  Now I associate them with strippers, so I tossed this bad boy in with my tips and deposited it.

Bar tending tips!  Not stripper tips. Yikes.

Melissa + Erik

I cannot believe this on so many levels.

Erik was my boyfriend in early high school.  He was cute and he was cool and he was a red head and he was a year older than me and and regardless of the fact that he treated me far too well, I treated him like crap.  I still feel bad about it.  I think it's pretty clear that I treated him poorly since I didn't have the decency to write this on anything like the paper bag cover of my world history book, I wrote it on a clothespin.

But not just any clothespin!  The dorkiness of this deepens when you learn that we used clothespins to hold our music down during outdoor band rehearsals and performances.  At first I assumed this was from marching band, something near and dear to both Erik's and my hearts, but then I remembered we had flip folders.  So it must come from graduation practices outdoors, or even the performance of Pomp and Circumstance at the big event itself.

Alright, that all seems legit, but here's the thing:  Erik and I never dated during a graduation.  So either I was pining for him and wanted him to be my future boyfriend, and thus secretly declared my affection on this clothespin for all surrounding clarinet players and third trumpets who sat behind me to see, or it was the FOLLOWING graduation, which seems unlikely because I'm fairly sure I had moved on to another doomed high school relationship by then.  I'm sure I will find Chris's name inked on something like a plastic orange spoon.  I'll keep looking.

Erik, I'm sorry I treated you so badly and wrote that we should be together on my music paperweight.  You always deserved better than that.

Primate Surprise

Someone in my family is just as weird as I am (could be any of them). 

My father is on a kick about cleaning out the attic.  We have tons of books that I didn't want to get lost to Good Will because I would like to have my own library of books that I loved growing up.  It's important to me.  Not important in the way that a Ginger Spice Lollipop wrapper is important, important in the real way.

So one of the books mixed in with all of our Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High and classics like Huckleberry Finn and Great Expectations was Planet of the Apes.  I'd never read Planet of the Apes, and it looked nice and short, so I stuck it in my "To Be Read" pile next to the other short and skinny books like Animal Farm and The Communist Manifesto (I'm on that train where I'm reading all the stuff I said I read in high school, but really just read enough about on the internet to get a B-).  Much to my delight, when I opened up Planet of the Apes, this was the bookmark left behind by the last person who read it.  I love that this happened, but I don't think I need to keep it.  Also, those are not monkey stickers.  They are heavy and kind of cardboard and have evidence of being glued to that piece of card stock.  This wreaks of Becky, but she would have been too old to make that if she was reading that book. 

iHoard

Much like every 20-something, iHave both an iPod and an iPhone.

Unlike every 20-something,  iHave the box to both sitting on my desk, and have done so for years.  My iPod is at least three years old.  And iAlready gritted my teeth as iDisposed of the box to my previous iPod.

iKept the literature from both boxes and filed that away with all my other electronic instructions but iThink it's time that iCleaned up my act and iRecycled some of these boxes.  iHave issues, but iDeal by writing about them on the iNternet.  Wait, that's not one of them?  iMsorry.

All Locked Up With No Place To Go

Every key on this keyring goes to something that no longer exists.   Keeping these was some twisted way of remembering each of them.  Let us begin.

The two black circular keys go to my old Volkswagon which I'm fairly sure we've talked about already. I drove that car for seven years.  It was so green and it always kind of smelled but it got great gas milage and had a pretty good sized trunk.  I love that little car so much.  It sang "La Cucaracha" when you left the keys in the ignition.  

The two small bronze keys, one square and one roundish, both opened the front door at Bart's Homemade in downtown Amherst.  The round key was the original, and then Tina changed the locks.  I don't remember why but I think I could come up with a number of reasons.  Being a CM (counter manager) or if you were one of the lucky few who opened the store (You had to be there before 7 AM which on college time is the middle of the night) meant you got to have a key to lock up or open the place.  It also meant that if you were downtown and stayed at the bar past last call, you could just go to Bart's to go to the bathroom.  And maybe eat chips and fountain soda (sorry, Tina).

The square black key goes to my dad's old Ford Explorer bought in 2001 that the dealership claimed didn't have the firestone recall on the tires.  I think that wasn't completely true as he had a blow out and totaled the car.  I remember I borrowed it once to pick up a drum set when I was 16 from Notre Dame Academy (all girls Catholic school) and thought I was so cool.

The silver oval key goes to my mom's nissan maxima that I learned to drive in.  It was also in a car accident, but that car was awesome.  I remember I accidentally drove it 100 miles an hour to the kingston mall listening to Radiohead's Amnesiac (sorry, Mom).

As for the little circular silver keys?  I'm pretty sure those go to a lock I lost.  I don't really know about those.  

MeLLissa Pappas

This is the name tag that was stuck to the side of my desk for my entire third grade year.  South River Elementary, Mrs. Graff.  Graf?  I can't remember.  And do you know why it doesn't bother me that I can't remember how to spell her name?  Because she can't spell mine either.

MeLLissa Pappas.

BURN!

I was young and fragile (I think I was 9) and I never thought that my teacher, the one who TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING and showed me what to do and what to read during quiet reading hours and sent me over to The Alamo building for science enrichment and showed me how to make a cardboard box to show me a solar eclipse without burning my eyes out and sent me to music class in the PA room to learn all about two part harmonies and lined me up for recess and gave me the building blocks of multiplication and long devision and took away my pencil with the times tables on it (it was orange and I'm kind of shocked it's not mixed in with all this stuff) COULDN'T GET MY NAME RIGHT?

I remember finding it the last week of school when we all cleaned out desks out.  Mixed in with all the Lisa Frank notebooks (stay tuned!) erasers shaped like animals and bugs and cars and rainbows purchased with nickels and dimes at the school store and pencils in every color and shade was the lie Mrs. Graf(f) had been telling all year.  I pulled the name tag off my desk and stared at it in horror.  I never saw it.  It was on the FRONT of my desk so SHE could see it and obviously she knew how to really write my name, I was in love with learning at 9 and was totally a self-declared teacher's pet, shame free, and she never even thought to tell me she messed up huge.  I mean, fix it some day after we left for the day!  Five seconds it would have taken her.  I stared in shock as I packed up all my art supplies and rulers and pencil sharpeners.  I remember Erika laughed.  I was heart broken and it made my third grade career feel like a lie.

Good bye cruel memory.  Joke's on Mrs. Graf(f).  I can't remember how to write in cursive anymore.