Tempted Into Nostalgia

The good ol' days ........
You know how it is when you decide to clean out your closet and you see the boxes of mementos sitting in the back corner. You’ve got them stacked neatly out of the way, knowing you have no reason to go through the box. You’re sorting through your clothes, tossing out that dress you’ve had hanging in there for ten years and all of a sudden you feel a little tug. You turn, but there’s no one there. Nope, no one at all. Just those boxes sitting over there in the dark. You do your best to resist the urge. You know that once you get started in that direction you will be lost for hours.


Ah, temptation!


Don’t give in, you tell yourself. Stay on track. You know what happens when you get lost.

You toss out a few more items for the goodwill store and then you crumble. Damn boxes. the temptation is just too good to resist. One more walk down memory lane won’t hurt, will it?


Here’s what I found tucked away in my closet today: My dad’s high school yearbook from 1958. Check out the lingo back then. I feel like I just stepped into an episode of Ozzie and Harriet. Isn’t it swell?

Apparently, "Cool Head" was a popular slang term back then.

You gotta love this guy's autograph. Short and to the point.

I found this great letter from my first love. He passed away last year, so this was a great find.

You can read his handwriting. Not bad for a guy.

The next page isn't really that clear, but he's telling me that the song, I Think I'm Turning Japanese is being played too much on the radio and he's getting burned out on it. I was grounded for some reason and so he was writing me a letter to tell me how much he loves me and he wished I would have ran away with him and got married. He was always such a romantic. Great memories. Some sad ones too.

This is a picture of me & Tim. We were 16 years old in 1980.

Here's a cool notebook that I wrote all of my poems in. Date range from 1986 to 1988. The expression on her face almost looks like a blow up doll.

This is a drawing I drew of myself, my best friend Jennifer, and my sister, Cheryl. It is really special to me because I'm not an artist, I can't draw worth a crap, and yet I produced this piece of art that actually does look like us.

Ah, to be 21 again. The bar hopping days. This is a flyer announcing an event of a reggae band we used to follow around in Bakersfield. I miss dancing my ass off.

This is an invitation to a party that a guy I dated was throwing. I wasn't able to attend because I lived two hours away.

I thought he was the coolest and cutest new wave guy I ever met.

Well, those are just a few of the items I chose to share. I have letters from friends dating back 30 years. It is amazing how much of it I still have. My husband would love to see me toss it out, but I just can't. The writings are very meaningful to me. Who knows, maybe someday someone will find all of my treasures in an old attic or basement a hundred years from now and be as excited about them as I still am.

I never did finish cleaning out the closet. Maybe tomorrow.