Keepsakes and Throwsakes
Nearly a month after graduation, I'm finally closing the door on the two years of my life spent at Tufts. After a few weeks of fruitlessly searching for subletters, (That could be an entry in itself, if I wanted to whine. Two people got lost trying to find my place. Two made appointments to see the place but never showed. Two people were uninterested when I was unwilling to negotiate to roughly half the normal rent. One couple actually came and looked at the room, but decided on another place.) I am heading back to Virginia tomorrow, and then on to CTY on Thursday. I do intend to return to Boston, and will be back in this apartment for the last couple weeks of its lease while I find something new, but if I do return, it will be as a teacher, not a student.
So, in preparation for my move, I have been packing up all my stuff, like you do when you move. In addition to clothes and musical instruments and consumer electronics, I have come across a lot of items of sentimental value. Some of them I keep because they're important to me, and others are important to me because I throw them out.
I packed away many, many more keepsakes than are worth listing here. But I'll mention a few, because I think they're unusual, or interesting.
* Half a dollar bill. Yes, half. It's from a big skit that's done in one of the CTY classes I teach. It's the punchline in a series of transactions, where the customer pays 2 dollars, 1 dollar, and finally, "half a buck." I was the gas station attendant who received the freshly ripped bill. The other guy wanted it back so he could tape it up, but I gave him a whole bill of my own instead.
* A blue slip for gummi bears, "for inventing the idea of classroom invasion." The site director at CTY ('00-'02) used to give out gummi bears as a token of praise. If something did something nice to you, you'd fill out a blue slip with their name and the reason they deserve gummi bears, and soon enough, gummi bears would appear in their mailbox. I won't go into the story behind classroom invasion, although I did have to do some investigating to figure out who gave me the gummis. The TA who sent them to me is still one of my dearest friends.
* A homemade coconut bra -- two halves of a coconut, with straps jury-rigged from a pair of shoelaces. This was part of a showgirl costume I wore at a Halloween concert with the Duke Wind Symphony back in '98 or so. It's a reminder (along with The Tuba Picture, for those of you who may remember that) that I am in fact capable of being a little bit wild and crazy, though I prefer to be more creative and less drunk than most in my craziness.
* Countless ceramic shards. When I won the CTY Lancaster Triennial Pizza-Eating Contest in 2003 for the second straight time, the owner of the pizzeria where we ate contributed a prize: a plate painted with a scene of the harbor in his hometown of Pozzuoli, Italy. I had intended to turn this into a rotating trophy: I would sign the back of the plate with a permanent marker, and pass it on to the new winner in 2006. But back in August, when I was packing up my car to head back from Virginia to Boston, a bag containing several frisbees and the plate slid off the roof of my car. The frisbees, being frisbees, remained intact, but the plate shattered. I collected all the pieces, and took them with me. I could try to reconstruct the plate with a heap of epoxy and the assistance of CTY's Archaeology class, but that doesn't quite feel right. Maybe each new winner gets their own shard?
* Lake Effect Snow's final status map from the 2005 MIT Mystery Hunt. This year, I was captain of my own team, Lake Effect Snow, and while my team was almost entirely new to the Hunt, it was my most enjoyable Hunt experience thus far. The Hunt organizers kept track of teams' progresses on makeshift maps, and I took our map home from the wrap-up session, as a well-earned trophy. Although Lake Effect Snow finished 19th, and only completed 1/3 of the Hunt, I personally consider it a major social victory that I was able to lead 15 or 20 newcomers, and get them all to have lots of fun. I still need to write about the Hunt someday...
* Other keepsakes I shan't write about in detail: A box of "Composition Cookies" (from the same TA who gave me gummi bears), The Aforementioned Tuba Picture, plastic foliage and a styrofoam bird from my most recent Halloween costume...I'm sure there's more that I've forgotten.
A throwsake is something that you throw out, where the throwing out itself holds some emotional importance to you. There were at least two throwsakes that I came across while packing.
* A love letter, written back in December. I had gotten a big crush on a friend of mine, but was quite shy (surprise!) about it. I visited her at the end of the fall semester, and I planned on giving her the letter as I left. I never gave her the letter, because she completely outmaneuvered me. I don't mean that she physically avoided me, I mean that her actions had been such that I couldn't even consider giving her the letter without feeling like a Bad Person. This past semester, we came to understand each other better, and are quite happy to love one another as friends. The letter sat at the bottom of a desk drawer for months -- I couldn't stand to think of how foolish I was for writing it, but at the same time, I thought I had written a beautiful letter, and couldn't bear to throw it away. But while a piece I compose for someone may hold value for others, my letter served no one, so I took a deep breath, remarked at how thankful I was for this friendship, and gently placed the letter in the trash.
* Old medications. I have had to deal with depression for over half my life, and that usually meant medication. This was frustrating for me in many ways -- on the one hand, I felt like I was dependent on the medication, and thus less worthy (before you point out how wrong-headed this is, let me point out that I was depressed and therefore seeking excuses to be unworthy) than others, and on the other hand, it was not always a reliable solution. Medications would lose their effect and dosages would increase until I hit the maximum safe dosage, and we'd give up and try something else. It was a never-ending game, only it wasn't much fun. A couple of years ago, I tried cognitive therapy, and though by that point I had grown sick of therapy, it really turned things around for me. I was able to help myself, and take an active role in keeping myself out of the debilitating valleys. I still kept some of my medication around, just in case: Celexa in case I had a panic attack, Sinequan if I needed a sleep-aid. But those were prescribed back in 2003, and the labels said to discard after 9/2004. I don't recall having touched them at all in the last year and a half. Throwing them out was the sign of a hard-fought victory in psychological self-sufficiency.
So, dear reader...what are your keepsakes and throwsakes?
-TT
So, in preparation for my move, I have been packing up all my stuff, like you do when you move. In addition to clothes and musical instruments and consumer electronics, I have come across a lot of items of sentimental value. Some of them I keep because they're important to me, and others are important to me because I throw them out.
I packed away many, many more keepsakes than are worth listing here. But I'll mention a few, because I think they're unusual, or interesting.
* Half a dollar bill. Yes, half. It's from a big skit that's done in one of the CTY classes I teach. It's the punchline in a series of transactions, where the customer pays 2 dollars, 1 dollar, and finally, "half a buck." I was the gas station attendant who received the freshly ripped bill. The other guy wanted it back so he could tape it up, but I gave him a whole bill of my own instead.
* A blue slip for gummi bears, "for inventing the idea of classroom invasion." The site director at CTY ('00-'02) used to give out gummi bears as a token of praise. If something did something nice to you, you'd fill out a blue slip with their name and the reason they deserve gummi bears, and soon enough, gummi bears would appear in their mailbox. I won't go into the story behind classroom invasion, although I did have to do some investigating to figure out who gave me the gummis. The TA who sent them to me is still one of my dearest friends.
* A homemade coconut bra -- two halves of a coconut, with straps jury-rigged from a pair of shoelaces. This was part of a showgirl costume I wore at a Halloween concert with the Duke Wind Symphony back in '98 or so. It's a reminder (along with The Tuba Picture, for those of you who may remember that) that I am in fact capable of being a little bit wild and crazy, though I prefer to be more creative and less drunk than most in my craziness.
* Countless ceramic shards. When I won the CTY Lancaster Triennial Pizza-Eating Contest in 2003 for the second straight time, the owner of the pizzeria where we ate contributed a prize: a plate painted with a scene of the harbor in his hometown of Pozzuoli, Italy. I had intended to turn this into a rotating trophy: I would sign the back of the plate with a permanent marker, and pass it on to the new winner in 2006. But back in August, when I was packing up my car to head back from Virginia to Boston, a bag containing several frisbees and the plate slid off the roof of my car. The frisbees, being frisbees, remained intact, but the plate shattered. I collected all the pieces, and took them with me. I could try to reconstruct the plate with a heap of epoxy and the assistance of CTY's Archaeology class, but that doesn't quite feel right. Maybe each new winner gets their own shard?
* Lake Effect Snow's final status map from the 2005 MIT Mystery Hunt. This year, I was captain of my own team, Lake Effect Snow, and while my team was almost entirely new to the Hunt, it was my most enjoyable Hunt experience thus far. The Hunt organizers kept track of teams' progresses on makeshift maps, and I took our map home from the wrap-up session, as a well-earned trophy. Although Lake Effect Snow finished 19th, and only completed 1/3 of the Hunt, I personally consider it a major social victory that I was able to lead 15 or 20 newcomers, and get them all to have lots of fun. I still need to write about the Hunt someday...
* Other keepsakes I shan't write about in detail: A box of "Composition Cookies" (from the same TA who gave me gummi bears), The Aforementioned Tuba Picture, plastic foliage and a styrofoam bird from my most recent Halloween costume...I'm sure there's more that I've forgotten.
A throwsake is something that you throw out, where the throwing out itself holds some emotional importance to you. There were at least two throwsakes that I came across while packing.
* A love letter, written back in December. I had gotten a big crush on a friend of mine, but was quite shy (surprise!) about it. I visited her at the end of the fall semester, and I planned on giving her the letter as I left. I never gave her the letter, because she completely outmaneuvered me. I don't mean that she physically avoided me, I mean that her actions had been such that I couldn't even consider giving her the letter without feeling like a Bad Person. This past semester, we came to understand each other better, and are quite happy to love one another as friends. The letter sat at the bottom of a desk drawer for months -- I couldn't stand to think of how foolish I was for writing it, but at the same time, I thought I had written a beautiful letter, and couldn't bear to throw it away. But while a piece I compose for someone may hold value for others, my letter served no one, so I took a deep breath, remarked at how thankful I was for this friendship, and gently placed the letter in the trash.
* Old medications. I have had to deal with depression for over half my life, and that usually meant medication. This was frustrating for me in many ways -- on the one hand, I felt like I was dependent on the medication, and thus less worthy (before you point out how wrong-headed this is, let me point out that I was depressed and therefore seeking excuses to be unworthy) than others, and on the other hand, it was not always a reliable solution. Medications would lose their effect and dosages would increase until I hit the maximum safe dosage, and we'd give up and try something else. It was a never-ending game, only it wasn't much fun. A couple of years ago, I tried cognitive therapy, and though by that point I had grown sick of therapy, it really turned things around for me. I was able to help myself, and take an active role in keeping myself out of the debilitating valleys. I still kept some of my medication around, just in case: Celexa in case I had a panic attack, Sinequan if I needed a sleep-aid. But those were prescribed back in 2003, and the labels said to discard after 9/2004. I don't recall having touched them at all in the last year and a half. Throwing them out was the sign of a hard-fought victory in psychological self-sufficiency.
So, dear reader...what are your keepsakes and throwsakes?
-TT