This WAS Me - a Long, Long Time Ago

Sometime in my youth I was given a book called THIS IS ME, copyright 1956 by Polly Webster. While searching for some tax papers I needed the other day, I came across this book. (Normally my papers are organized, but our move last year changed all that.) I wrote in this book, according to my pencil notations, when I was 8, 10, 11 1/2, 12, 13 1/2, 14, 17, 20 and 43 years old. It's intended as a sort of diary, but I'm not surprised to see additional notations by my little sister Laura and Kerry, who was my best friend back in the day. (We're still friends now but we don't see each other very often.) 

Me at about age 8 - sadly lacking a tiara

I was interested to see the books I liked back then. (Most of these I remember, but I was surprised to see a list of classics posted in 1969, when I was 17. I have to laugh when I read the headings: "Books I read because I had to" and "But these books I read because I wanted to read them." Under that list, my comments included Mystery Books and Good Books and (my daughter will snicker) the misspelled "Island of the Blue Dolfins."

This one is funny and kind of sad. The heading of the page is "If I had a thousand dollars I would..." (Well, there are no ellipses, but - damn it - there should be!) In my innocence at age 10, I wrote: "If I had a thousand dollars I would send 1 hundred dollars of it to CARE, 1 hundred the slums in Chicago and with the rest (!!!) I would buy myself a house, new clothes, some kittens, furniture food and (gotta love it) a tiara. I would (editor needed here to insert "spend") the rest for mostly bills." The REST???

As a teenager, when I should have been more worldly-wise in economics, I still expected that a thousand dollars would pay for a year of college (clearly, my son did NOT get his math smarts from me!). In the midst of my charitable inclinations, I also included a haircut and makeup for myself, as well as CHOCOLATE ECLAIRS.

On the "When I Grow Up" page, I'm shocked to see "hair stylist" at the top of the "Things I Want to Be" (along with writer, wife, mother, social worker, saleslady, newspaper reporter, etc.). I think that was wishful thinking, because I've always found the talent for hair styling elusive. Judging by the sample of my artistic talents on the right, it's clear to see why I never became an artist. I'm surprised to see that on the list. (I'm also mystified by chef, nurse, dressmaker and architect - those must have made the list because I'd recently read books that featured heroines with those careers.)

Easy to see where my priorities were! Notice house and baby came before college and car. I was mad about the Beatles, but did eventually marry an Englishman and got my wish to go to England. (Who knew I'd eventually live there, too?) Nowadays I can afford to treat myself to dried apricots and chocolate eclairs - rare treats growing up in a family of seven - although it's a tragedy neither are quite as appealing as they were back then.

On other pages I listed things I worried about:

"If I'm really all that much taller than everyone else" (I was 5'7" in middle school, eventually reaching 5'8")
"If my dress is up in back"
"If I'm a pest"
"If I'm monopolizing the conversation" (odds are, yes!)
"If I'm going to pass math"
"If I'm going to be late to school"
"If I have food on my face"
"If my hair's messed up" (I'm going to guess "yes" on this one, too!)

My favorite things to do? According to this book:

Read
Goof off (sub-heading: Goof off with BOYS) *snicker*
Watch TV
Listen to radio (that would have been my primary source of Beatle music)
Joke
Work
Ice Skate
Swim
Eat
Sleep
Talk

My favorite colors were, surprisingly, white and pink. Favorite magazine was Ingenue, favorite books - same as now, too many to list. Favorite food: pizza. (What? Not chocolate eclairs??) Favorite place - now this is a mystery: Indiana! Favorite pastime: Reading. Then, apparently when I was trying to be cool as a teenager, "Gin & Tonic" was added to the list of favorites.

I went back and commented on my earlier comments when I was older. There is a chart to show responsibilites and I put an X under "Neat." Later I went back and wrote "You're kidding!" next to that one. Next to "I am bossy" I wrote "I DON'T KNOW" in big red letters. (It was a constant oldest-sister concern.)

Under physical talents I put Xs next to I Can Turn Somersaults, I Can Do Cartwheels and I Can Stand On My Head" but next to I Can Do Clog Dancing I wrote in all caps "WHAT IS IT???"

So that was my trip down memory lane. My son glanced through this book today and was interested that many of my early career choices came close to the mark. This phrase keeps coming up in my life lately:
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Loosely translated, it means "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

A scary thought just struck me - this book is more than fifty years old. It's an antique! Or is an antique over 100 years old? Whew - I've got a few decades before the book and I are antiquarian, in that case. Maybe I'll update it again in another 20 years or so!

The Time Machine in My Garage

Today, my husband and I took a trip through the Wayback Machine. All we had to do was step into our garage - it was a wild ride!

First, a disclaimer: If you walk into my house, you don't have to squeeze through the door and navigate through stacks of things. I don't have wall-to-wall collections, unless you count books, and those are neatly shelved on bookcases. Those that wouldn't fit in bookcases are in organized bins. I'm not a hoarder.

Doth I protest too much? Probably. Because while I'm not a hoarder, I AM a collector. Okay, with certain things I'll admit it, I'm a pack rat. (Have you seen my Pinterest page? That's after only two months. Imagine what I can collect in twenty years.) To some extent, so is my husband.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. We've saved some really cool stuff, like every issue of the Beatles books my husband received during his years in the Beatles' fan club back in England. We have a LOT of Beatle albums, 45s, books, magazines, newspapers - pretty much anything related to the Beatles, we saved.

We also saved a lot of crap. Treasured crap, but still...

I saved pretty much every sheet of paper my kids ever drew or painted on, every school assignment, every Sunday School paper, programs from every play they were in, Student of the Month awards, sports awards, and so on and so forth.

I'm a letter-writer, card-sender and postcard-mailer, always have been. In return, a lot of people have sent me letters, cards and postcards over the years. I've probably saved 90 percent of them. Okay, maybe only 80 percent. It's still a lot of paper.

If only that were all I saved, it would be relatively normal. But no, the pack rat in me didn't draw the line at pretty cards, treasured letters or my kids' memorabilia. I saved everything.

Today, I decided to tackle the bins of papers we've stored in neat, organized, non-hoarder type stacks in the garage. Spring cleaning for pack rats is never a simple project. In this case, it was less a cleaning project than a trip back through a time machine.

Among the things I found:

*A canvas sailor hat my friends autographed back in 1966, between 8th grade and freshman year.

* I tried not to stop and read all the Christmas and birthday cards in the bins, but I did find a 21st birthday card to me from my husband.

*Business cards and pay slips from every place I've worked in the past 35 years or so.

*Cancelled checks and bank statements from the year my daughter was born (1983). I paid some bills the day I went into the hospital!

*An old wallet insert filled with pictures of my husband from the mid-1970s.

*My union card from when I was in NATSOPA in England in the late 1970s.

*Mortgage papers, plus receipts for carpeting, furniture and repairs on the two houses we owned in England, back in the 1970s and early 1980s.

*My pocket calendar with the list of farewell parties we attended right before we moved back to the U.S.

*Newspapers with just about every major event in the last 40 years.

*Wallpaper swatches my husband and I both recognize but can't for the life of us remember which houses they were from.

*Countless cards and letters from relatives who haven't been with us for years.

*Half a bin filled with letters, cards and postcards written by me when we lived in England and mailed to my grandmother and mother, who saved them. My mom passed hers on to me when they moved to a smaller house. I'm sure they tell an interesting story of our life over the pond, but will I ever read them? Will anybody? Probably not. The only people they're likely to interest are me and my husband, and I can't see us going through them all. Life goes on.

*Although, we did find a huge stack of journals my husband wrote while we lived in England. He flipped one open to the day I fell down some wet marble steps, sprained and fractured my ankle and tore some ligaments in my knee. It took a long time to heal (because it happened while I was working - we were madly busy and I didn't take the time to go to the doctor for two or three days). When I hit my fifties, that dang knee started acting up occasionally. I'd forgotten when it happened - now I can pin it down to the exact day in 1977.

*The journals are incredibly detailed, and we've had some laughs at the descriptions of a few of our arguments back then. I was touched that my husband mentioned my new hair style (he liked it), and that he'd listed every little thing I gave him for Christmas.

*There were a lot of things I have no clue why I saved - book club catalogues, magazine clippings, brochures from hotels we stayed at, even airline luggage tags from every trip we've ever taken. There were also lots of cool things, like playbills from all the shows we saw in London. Good times!

We probably transferred fifty pounds of paper from the storage bins to the trash bins, and there are a lot of bins left. Both Marty and I are feeling nostalgic, but with no desire to actually return to those days. Our little jaunt back through time has been fun, as well as dusty and a bit tiring. When it comes right down to it, though, even though we're older and grayer now, I really wouldn't want to go back through time.

I like it fine just where I am.