Time machine
Part of the fun today of going through my things is finding all the junk accumulated over time. All the artifacts of previous chapters of my life.
Of course, it also helps to have a mother who works for the city Law Department, hence she SAVES EVERYTHING. I have index cards with stickers on them from the first grade.
-- A box full of dolls, including my Cabbage Patch Kid, a Pound Puppies knockoff called Kennel Kritters, and my Fozzie Bear.
-- College application junk, from when Carnegie Mellon, Brown and Tufts recruited me. And my applications, all intact, with essays. Oh, to post my college application essay filled with 17-year-old wisdom about the dual nature of humanity.
-- My essay from the sixth grade when I won an American Leagion award for "I Am Proud To Be An American."
-- An eighth-grade essay on "a single event that changed my life." I picked buying a comic book. When I was 13, I wanted to get art degrees, be an artist, and draw comics all my life.
-- Papers from when I shadowed an Academy of Vocal Arts performance of Engelbert Humperdinck's (the 18th-century German composer, not Gerry Dorsey) "Hansel and Gretel" at the Zellerbach Theatre in the Annenberg Center for Performing Arts at University of Pennsylvania, and a program.
-- My box of papers and videos from college theater and other activities. Found my tape of the one Kuumba Singers concert I was in, as well as a student-written musical that has my best singing performance ever recording. (Rosemary, we can watch them if you want.) There's also a tape of a 2000 Fringe Festival project I did on a piece of American Street in Old City.
And now I hit on some high school junk, and other nerd artifacts that I've kept. Among them, a "Pee Wee's Playhouse" 1990 calendar; my collection of buttons (which I used to wear on a faux denim jacket, like a sucker; my "Get Along Gang" Bingo Beaver piggy bank. (Notice on the TVTome.com link that Nicky Katt did voices on that show!)
Also in the box are a bunch of childhood photos. My parents are notorious for taking photos and never developing them. There are rolls left, still, from like 1987. But most of the developed ones somehow fell into a box of my things. Such as a church trip to the Statue of Liberty that my mother and I took when I was about 8, which my large-spectacled, pot-bellied self hanging on a ferry. Shots from my Uncle Kenny's wedding in 1990, when I got my first suit. Shots from my grandfather's wedding. Family photos from some Christmas where I look about 6. It was the year I got Jetfire of the Transformers, natch. Shots of my dad and mom with us. Me and my brother looking goofy. Shots from inside the old house near 54th and Market, with the deep green carpet and floor-model TV. My dad when he still had a beard.
-- High school photos from theater parties. Old friends I don't know any more. A couple I still do, and how much younger they all looked. Shots from the Fat Jack's Comicrypt at 20th and Sansom, with the people I knew there. Especially Barbara, my soulmate, but for her being in her mid-20s and me being 14. A shot of me and artist Renee French ("Grit Bath"), who, given what she draws, shouldn't have been freaked out by me, but I later heard she was.
Fun times.
Of course, it also helps to have a mother who works for the city Law Department, hence she SAVES EVERYTHING. I have index cards with stickers on them from the first grade.
-- A box full of dolls, including my Cabbage Patch Kid, a Pound Puppies knockoff called Kennel Kritters, and my Fozzie Bear.
-- College application junk, from when Carnegie Mellon, Brown and Tufts recruited me. And my applications, all intact, with essays. Oh, to post my college application essay filled with 17-year-old wisdom about the dual nature of humanity.
-- My essay from the sixth grade when I won an American Leagion award for "I Am Proud To Be An American."
-- An eighth-grade essay on "a single event that changed my life." I picked buying a comic book. When I was 13, I wanted to get art degrees, be an artist, and draw comics all my life.
-- Papers from when I shadowed an Academy of Vocal Arts performance of Engelbert Humperdinck's (the 18th-century German composer, not Gerry Dorsey) "Hansel and Gretel" at the Zellerbach Theatre in the Annenberg Center for Performing Arts at University of Pennsylvania, and a program.
-- My box of papers and videos from college theater and other activities. Found my tape of the one Kuumba Singers concert I was in, as well as a student-written musical that has my best singing performance ever recording. (Rosemary, we can watch them if you want.) There's also a tape of a 2000 Fringe Festival project I did on a piece of American Street in Old City.
And now I hit on some high school junk, and other nerd artifacts that I've kept. Among them, a "Pee Wee's Playhouse" 1990 calendar; my collection of buttons (which I used to wear on a faux denim jacket, like a sucker; my "Get Along Gang" Bingo Beaver piggy bank. (Notice on the TVTome.com link that Nicky Katt did voices on that show!)
Also in the box are a bunch of childhood photos. My parents are notorious for taking photos and never developing them. There are rolls left, still, from like 1987. But most of the developed ones somehow fell into a box of my things. Such as a church trip to the Statue of Liberty that my mother and I took when I was about 8, which my large-spectacled, pot-bellied self hanging on a ferry. Shots from my Uncle Kenny's wedding in 1990, when I got my first suit. Shots from my grandfather's wedding. Family photos from some Christmas where I look about 6. It was the year I got Jetfire of the Transformers, natch. Shots of my dad and mom with us. Me and my brother looking goofy. Shots from inside the old house near 54th and Market, with the deep green carpet and floor-model TV. My dad when he still had a beard.
-- High school photos from theater parties. Old friends I don't know any more. A couple I still do, and how much younger they all looked. Shots from the Fat Jack's Comicrypt at 20th and Sansom, with the people I knew there. Especially Barbara, my soulmate, but for her being in her mid-20s and me being 14. A shot of me and artist Renee French ("Grit Bath"), who, given what she draws, shouldn't have been freaked out by me, but I later heard she was.
Fun times.