Due to current renovations on our house, my family spent the entire day yesterday emptying rooms of clothing and furniture. Unluckly for me, the rest of the family had had a head start – my parents started last week, and my brother had essentially completely moved out of the house before starting his junior year in college. I, on the other hand, had a full closet, a full chest of drawers, and a small family of trolls under my bed. And so, I began my task.
I started with my closet, finding it far less difficult than it had been in the past to throw away little trinkets from my youth. I found the wooden floor of my closet empty, and began to go through my dresses and skirts hanging there. Now this hurt. I got rid of (donated) my first “grown up” skirt, my classy gray skirt from Express, and worst of all, my purple and black jester costume from 6th grade. (Actually, that last one wasn’t all that difficult.) Going through my skirts and dresses, remembering what I wore them for….then I stumbled upon my prom dress from senior year. That I didn’t donate. It was the most magical article of clothing I’ve ever worn in my entire life. There are no words to describe how I felt wearing it, and how it makes me feel looking at it. It’s one of those pieces of clothing that absolutely transforms you.
Finally, my closet empty, I emptied my drawers, a surprisingly simple task, considering I brought all the clothes I actually like to school, so it wasn’t hard to distinguish what to keep and what to get rid of. With all the clothing accounted for, I prepared myself for the most daunting of all my jobs. The mess beneath my mattress.
10 years ago, I could easily shimmy under the mattress, fitting my entire body beneath it. Now, my brain has grown so much, I can’t even fit my head into the space between the frame and the floor. Which is probably good, because there have GOT to be some nasty dust born viruses living beneath my bed. I rummaged around my junk until I found the back scratcher a friend bought for me in Chinatown years ago. Great, now I had an extension of my being with which to reach the mass of stuff beneath my bed. It worked really well, the claw at the end was great for grasping stuff.
I didn’t find anything particularly breathtaking, old magazines, books, drawings, pitiful 6th grade poems about how cruel the world was. But then, JACKPOT. Nestled in the far corner, beneath my mattress, in the upper right hand corner, was a little green stride rite shoebox. I pulled it over. Can you guess what I found? I found…Pogs.
Pogs became popular the summer before I was in 2nd grade. I remember sitting on the floor of Mrs. Reed’s classroom, next to the baby chicks we were hatching, trading pogs. I found my Slammer too, and it has got to be the sickest slammer ever. It’s yellow and black. I must have over 200 pogs, including the sparkly ones my dad bought me in Florida. They had teddy bears and unicorns on them. (Unicorns? Cringe.) But, I had some pretty hardcore pogs too. Wavy Gravy from Ben & Jerry’s, pogs my Dad’s company had made, Schwinn Bikes pogs, skull pogs, but the best pog ever?
Math Blaster! I found a math blaster pog! Math Blaster was a computer game my brother and I played when we were little. There were little colorful astronauts and math problems. To be perfectly honest, as pitiful as it is, the last time I was able to do math correctly was while playing Math Blaster. Needless to say, I did NOT donate my Pogs.
What I did donate however, was the most shameful pile I have ever seen in my entire life. I brag and I boast a great deal about my fabulous taste in music. Truly. My taste in music is better than yours. But that didn’t really come about until late high school, when I really started my obsession with music.
Before that, in middle school, my prepubscent days of naivety, I owned these:
If you look closely at that pile of compact discs you will see – BBMak, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Madonna, and Destiny’s Child. I am so sorry you had to see that. But to be honest, I don’t think I could have learned to be a full and complete person without facing my past demons – blonde and high pitched as they are.
And so, I sit cross-legged on my bed, staring at my empty walls, reminiscing on the days when life was simple, and we all played Pogs.
