During a recent visit to my parents' house, they asked me to clean out a couple drawers in my old bedroom so they could use the space. Sifting through two decades of my life was pretty interesting. There were such prized possessions as plastic jewelry, banana clips (remember those?), notes from high school friends, a teensy pair of glasses that fit my face at five, a whole collection of buttons like the ones we used to pin all over our jean jackets - there was one I had made and decorated with pink hearts that said, "I love Bon Jovi!!", a short story written by me in elementary school and typed on a typewriter (it was actually a really good story and sort of humorous! Maybe I'll post it sometime), hair ribbons, old pictures, and a whole array of other things that were once important enough to keep.

Side note: I found a super cute picture of my cousin when he was a baby. When he was born I was in junior high school. When he was an infant I used to sit on the couch at my aunt's house holding him and pretending he was my baby - like a doll, only real. I actually saw him last week. He is turning 18 at the end of this month.

Anyway, going through those drawers was a fascinating trip down memory lane. Then just tonight I happened to smell something plastic just for an instant that brought me right back to second grade when the most wonderful things in the world were plasticky-smelling prism stickers. Prism stickers had liquid inside them and you could press on them to move the liquid around. For some reason we could buy them at school sometimes along with scratch and sniff stickers and small erasers shaped like hearts and flowers. It's just amazing to think back at how important these things were at the time. Treasured and loved and stored in drawers in my old bedroom just like a time capsule waiting for me to open it. Except instead of just finding erasers and banana clips and notes from old friends, I found a long forgotten piece of myself.  ¶ 10:19 PM