Old School

overlap

Urgency Day 1

500 Things Item 499: My Old Cork Bulletin Board

• History: Purchased for my first dorm room
• Value: The original changing picture frame, and no batteries req.
• Parting pain: None
• Un-possessing: Donated to Sam’s first dorm room

Picture a Venn Diagram: 2 College Packing Lists.

Mine, c. 1980:

• Iron and ironing board
• Albums and stereo
• Black and white TV
• Coordinating-roommate linens
• Popcorn popper
• Quarters for laundry
• Leotards, tights, ballet slippers

His, August 23, 2011:

• Laptop computer
• iPod and cell phone
• Hard drive from his Xbox
• Uncoordinated linens
• Energy bars
• A loaded V-card for all campus purchases
• 3 guitars and an amp

And the teeny tiny overlap in the middle?

• My old cork bulletin board.

Dry erase boards are fine for jotting smudgy notes, and cell phones simplify… well… everything. But you still want a place to hang some tangible mementos— tickets from a concert, a card from home, a scrap of paper on which you and your friends scribbled the most mind-blowing, reality-crushing, paradigm-shifting idea ever. If only you could decipher the handwriting.

An old-school cork bulletin board is a place where those bits of flotsam and jetsam can effortlessly accumulate. By May, it will form a time capsule of a year in a life. It’s the very same surface on which my new life accumulated 30 years ago, but his will certainly hold fewer pictures of Mikhail Baryshnikov and more… who?  More what?

I could guess Muse and Foos and Green Day. I could guess Zelda and Pullman and Vonnegut. Sure, maybe, for awhile. But this is his past. Starting tomorrow, he will be creating a new past.

I know I said I wouldn’t count things Sam takes to college as part of my 500 Things Project. I also said I would never say, “Because I said so,” or “Turn that music down!” or “You’ll thank me later.” Motherhood changes everything. Every. Thing.

There is no other thing of mine that will reside in his new home.

Nothing, and everything.

old school

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