Time Capsule

A Pillsbury Dough Boy key chain...a stuffed fortune cookie made of felt...House on the Rock memorabilia...

Group picture at Green Lakes State Park in NY.

We apparently expected to open the time capsule in 2003 as recently minted college grads.  Instead it took another eight years beyond that (and a reunion in upstate New York) before any of the trinkets and letters we’d so earnestly stashed away saw the light of day again. 

Posing with a giant chicken in high school.  (Chickens 4 Peace!!)

Last weekend three of the AMAZING girls that I graduated from high school with (and their husbands) came to visit.  I still can’t really believe that we were all able to get together like that, especially a thousand miles away from our hometown.  It’s even harder to believe that our escapades in middle school and high school are now literally half a lifetime ago.  Weird.  And while a lot has certainly happened since the “good old days” of AP classes, all-night Halloween parties, and silly road-trips, there were still moments Sunday night where it seemed like we were just teenagers again, giggling and scheming and putting-off writing D.B.Q.’s for US History.

 

...a Newsweek magazine with Saddam Hussein’s face on it...pictures from prom...a can of spam with curly hair and googly eyes...

Ball o' Twine '99!!

The highlight of the evening, though, was definitely opening up the time capsule we had put together just a few weeks before heading off to college.  It was actually kind of strange.  While I remember sitting in Kirsta’s basement filling out questionnaires and tossing in all sorts of strange items as if it was just a couple summers ago, almost everything in the time capsule was at least initially completely unfamiliar.  I don’t think any of us even recognized the college-pennant-plastered box it was stored in, let alone some of the bizarre pieces of memorabilia hiding inside.  (That doesn’t mean we’re getting old…does it??)

...Winterfest buttons...Rio Bravo matches...the key to a 1985 Ford station wagon...

Dying togas for homecoming and partying like it's 1999!

Perhaps the best surprise, though, was discovering that rather than being a discouraging confrontation between old hopes and current realities, the whole experience was largely a serendipitous walk down memory lane.  Twelve years later and  we’re still friends.  Twelve years later and each of us has accomplished many of the things we so optimistically predicted for ourselves.  Twelve years later and coupons for the “Stick Emporium” carefully produced using ProShop still make us laugh hysterically.  

...guesses for who would marry for money and who would have kids first...stick-figure drawings of all of Amber’s expected future hair styles...multi-page surveys detailing bizarre moments in our friendship...

At the end of the evening we committed to putting together more letters, pictures, and predictions to make yet another installment of the time capsule (which we actually first did at the end of middle school) (yes…we might be nerds…).  I’m not sure where we’ll all be when we get around to having another time-capsule-weekend; hopefully it won’t take a decade-and-then-some this time.  (And hopefully some of our other high school friends who couldn't make it for this trip will get to be a part of the grand opening too next time.)  Whenever and wherever we all are when the stars do align, though, I’m sure of a few things: 1. these girls will still be doing AMAZING things with their lives, 2. I’ll still feel almost like pinching myself that I ended up with friends like this, and 3. the VHS cassette from…um, never mind…will still be the funniest thing in the time capsule.

About to open the time capsule.  (And hoping it really IS  the time capsule: when it looked so unfamiliar there was some momentary fear that Tammy had been hauling around ten pounds of bank statements and recipe cards on the trip instead.)

Savoring the silliness.

Reading all of the letters and questionnaires.  Can't wait to do it again in another decade!!