Nothing ages you more than receiving the notification on social media for an upcoming event for your high school reunion.
It’s the big two decades for my class.
Right now, my past is very much alive in our garage after visiting the storage unit. At least a mix of cardboard boxes and plastic containers are ready for purging.
I quickly peeked into a few containers as we moved them of the storage unit to the truck – lots of high school items I still have. A jacket from my first job. My soccer cleats. Random pictures. For that matter just a lot of random stuff.
Some items will be kept like books from my childhood I can pass on and some of my Scooby-Doo collection can be put to use by my 2-year-old son.
Some of the boxes, which I haven’t opened, will be interesting as the handwriting is by a 12-year-old version of me. One has “things valuable to me” written in black ink. Oh, young pre-teen me, I am sorry but most of items are probably going away.
Though what will stay, the classics – the Strawberry Shortcake figures, standing three inches tall and smell like their character like Apple Dumplin’, Huckleberry Pie and the Purple Pieman (Yah–tah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah, tah-tah-tah-tah! Cha!). With it the foggy memories of looking for new figures at toy stores. One coming to mind is a store at Winchester Mall, once located at Avon and Rochester roads. Amazing what one remembers in random flashes.
I am sure somewhere in the boxes is a Rainbow Brite doll. What else is in there? Oh, a lot of Barbie items – clothes, vehicles, pieces of the house, tons of dolls. I weaned though it once when I realized I didn’t need that much. Now, it will need to be cut down a lot more. Sure there are tons of memories in there – hours of storytelling in the basement and having Barbie drive around her 1957 Chevy Bel Air (I love that car even more so than the Barbie and the Rockers travel bus I sold other toys to purchase when I was about six-years-old.)
I am slowly going through one box at a time. Some items go quickly to the side and others… will my 2-year-old really need Berenstain Bears and Muppet Babies Happy Meal toys. What about those crazy milkcap Pogs which the craze quickly fizzled out as quickly as it started?