A Gift To Me, From Past-Me

I've recently received the best gift from a former me. 

My parents are moving to a new house, and out of the one that I had lived in since I was like 10.  In cleaning up their crawlspace, they told me to come by and get all of my stuff!  I couldn't really figure out what "stuff" they meant...I thought I had pretty much thrown out everything that I didn't move out with, so I was kinda interested to see what they were talking about.

I show up to help them clean out the basement, and they start handing me boxes that say "robert's things". I look in them, and...it's like my baby clothes?  Baby shoes and stuff?  Haha, I'm all what's this?  I didn't really consider any of that stuff "Mine", y'know?  Kind of an interesting perspective...if they weren't mine, who's were they?  When did I become "Me"?

Either way, it was interesting to go through; my parents had saved so much!  Even what I guess they called my "lovey" - a happy stuffed dog-head thing that my grandma bought which was my favorite security item when I was 4 months old.  It was actually really odd to look at; there was some weird sub-conscious emotional type'a feelings I had towards the thing.  They had to throw it away cause the stuffing was kinda rotten, but I got a picture of it:

<>                                                   My "Lovey" that baby-me owned.
       
Anyway, so there were also two other boxes of things; things I had actually packed myself from times when I'd throw everything out in my room.  These were the things that I couldn't bring myself to get rid of, so I actually remember the two times over the years where I packed these boxes for "me" in the future.  And here I was.

There was tons of fascinating things in these boxes.  Workbooks from Kindergarten?  And first grade?  Like, remember the time when you'd draw all these symbols on a piece of paper and ask your parents what it said? I found some of that!  I think my mom had told me to save most of the things, which was pretty cool of her.    Looking through them, i got this amazing feeling of continuity... There's so much of "me" that has been "me" since at least when I was in kindergarten!

I kind of remember that in these workbooks, as we went through them in class, we would have to circle each page number just so the teacher would know we were paying attention or whatever.  Well in these books, mine started out as circles..then they'd get to be squares, and octagons, and houses and all sorts'a things as I got bored paying attention, haha.  The pages where we had to match an item with the sound it started with had a mixture of lines, and squiggly lines, into loopy lines...I do the same type'a things now, which is Really freakin' entertaining.

A funny thing, was some sort of "progress chart" that was filled out for my parents by my teacher in kindergarten.  It was called like "The Path that Leads To...Robert" (this was before I was "ROb!") and it was this flow-chart thing that like rated me from working with others, to health, and spelling and all this stuff... and the last thing on the path was "Citizenship."  And there were notes relating to how well I would integrate as an american citizen. Interesting...

Found some old stories of mine from school, and apparently I have the same type of humor as I do now. Though more sofisticated, naturally. ;) Combining words into new ones, "verbing" all sort'sa stuff.  Really really funny to read. Particularly striking as to how it was the building blocks of who I now am.  Or, at least how I now act?

But yeah, neat stuff... I used to draw this dog and cat that I think a babysitter had taught me; I hadn't drawn them in like probably twenty years, so I went and doodled them on some paper. It was oddly comfortable.  There was even this weird drawing that I had done when I was like four!  I remember always making sure to keep it; i knew it was something "important" even when I was eight. I always made sure to know where it was.  Some weird sort'a half-dinosaur, half-man with eight feet  type of thing, haha.  The symbols and the dino/man reminded me of some of the ancient cave drawings we now find.  A lot of them are of "anthropomorphised beings" and stuff. It's apparently one of those "mysteries" of ancient cultures.  There's very similar themes with my kid-drawings!  I bet we could understand them more by watching the symbolic/artistic development of children. Hmm..

Oh, yeah!  One of the coolest things I found, was this note I had written to my self.  Apparently, when I was in like second or third grade I was in a spelling bee!  I don't even remember it at All, but I guess I took second place!  I do remember writing the note to me, though; it took me over an hour since I made sure to use my best cursive writing as I documented the occassion. 

Apparently my spelling really really sucked, so I decided to study hard for it, and try with everything I had.  My brother helped me study, I always took the spelling-book around with me, and I ended up with second place!  I told my self to remember that studying really does pay off, and that I could do anything if I tried.  Wow, I think I really could use that reminder.  Thanks , me!

There was so much stuff to go through in these boxes, and I was really digging on it!  I kept switching back-and-forth, wondering... was way to approach the moment was to study it like an archeologist, or to enjoy as something I had given myself?

Some other neat things were from school assignments and stuff.  My biggest weaknesses in 2nd grade were: Handwriting, and use of time.  Ack, those are still some of my biggest weaknesses!  What do I want to be when I grow up?  "A teacher, or a constructor".  I think i meant engineer.

But yeah, it was all a very interesting experience.  Found notes my mom had left for me after school, notes in "code" that my friends passed back and forth, notes from teachers...All sorts of homework type stuff, some of my first attempts at writing in bubble letters, hahaha.  It was really amazing.  It's just breathtaking the amount of knowledge that they have to teach us!  Like really left an impression on how much work is behind the current "basic knowledge" I now have. Quite the job to teach so much to such little people; I have a large respect for teachers.

And that's about it that was in the boxes. Some old transformer toys and stuff that I got to have fun playing with all over again. The amount of time I spent with these toys!  It was all great, all the doodles had big smiles on their faces, there were all these bright scenes...I was apparently a pretty happy child.

My parents found some other stuff, too, like from middle and high-school.  That wasn't so much fun. I had some pretty depressed years there, where i hated school, hated the system...got talked to a few times for writing long rants about how they were trying to "brainwash me" on tests I was taking, hahaha...It was kinda sad.  The interesting part was how when I read some of this stuff...i really started having second thoughts about going back to school!  I semi-slipped back into that mindset, it was really interesting.  Naturally, I know it'll be different now, and I'm still really determined, but. ..it was interesting to see the old pattern.

SOoOOooo, anyway!!  I really enjoyed this gift to my self from the past. I think I really learned a lot!  It's great to know that the "me" i am, I've been for a long time.  Just one'a them things, I guess ;-)

One last thing.  There was a cool "Kugi" poem that I actually dig that I had written in third grade. It even got a "Wow!" written next to it by a teacher hehe:

    In the mist of shining sun,
    I can see the Tops of tree Tops,
    and the Tops of the mountains

Haha, and I didn't think I wrote poems.  Wait... Me who?