What I Found: Childhood Bedroom Closet Edition

What I Found When I Cleaned Out My Childhood Bedroom Closet For The First Time Since Sixth Grade

(A Comprehensive List)

• old cassette tapes (mostly audiobooks)
• t-shirts from middle and high school extracurricular activities and theatre productions
• costume pieces
• homecoming dresses
• vintage clothing (not in a cute way)
• several baby pictures of myself

• old diaries and half-used journals
  • including: a wanted ad I wrote in a diary (at age 13) for a Perfect Boyfriend
    • the ad is SPOT-ON applicable to the Fella

• an old Game Boy link cable
• a glitter baton

• a meow stick that doesn’t work except for the exact moment I knocked it over and it made a horrifying gargling moan and I screamed a little and dropped it on the floor

• a Hit Clips complete with *NSync’s “It’s Gonna Be Me” locked and loaded…but the battery is dead
• an *NSync visor and an *NSync bucket hat, each purchased at a separate live performance of the finest boy band ever to grace a public stage

• clothes from an age where acid wash made sense and all shirts I owned needed to have either celtic imagery or horses or both
• shoes. lots of shoes. too many shoes. why the hell are there so many shoes in there? what did I DO with so many shoes???
• a birdhouse I made in art class in 5th grade with a considerable amount of adult supervision

• one two three pairs of fairy wings, all different

• terrible incredible one-of-a-kind paintings of childhood pets, including a lop-eared bunny named Coco, a gray-and-blue budgie named…I forget what her name was, and a horse who was absolutely made up and did not actually belong to me in any way
• notes for made-up games circa 2000 for a Harry Potter book release party that I never actually hosted, including proof that I invented real life quidditch several years before those meddling kids at Middlebury College in 2005
• a small plush palm tree (???)
• a small rainstick
• a metric buttload of Beanie Babies in painfully good condition
  • do you want some? see me for details
• more clothes hangers than a Goodwill store
• a lifetime’s worth of stuffed animals, mostly won from crane machines because I’m that good

• five chapters (printed, not handwritten) of a Mary Sue Lord of the Rings fanfic in which my protagonist performs combat based on a scene from the Sandra Bullock movie “Miss Congeniality” and can talk to horses

• ten pages (handwritten) of a Harry Potter fanfic wherein Malfoy steals Hedwig and re-names her Beast for some reason, probably to prove a point about his manhood
• the remnants and debris of several feather boas (black, dark green, and dark purple) which are suspiciously missing
• a limited edition Star Wars: Episode One jumbo cup from Taco Bell shaped like Queen Amidala
• a pair of purple plush VW Bug slippers

• books and books and books and books and books and books and

• a small shell box containing a (preserved) seahorse carcass (Past Me, what the HECK)
• six forensics trophies from high school
• seven disposable cameras
• a Mickey Mouse telephone that I won in a raffle in 7th grade

• a Furby

• a copy of a deeply philosophical and emotional one-act play I was in in 2006, penned by a dear poetic old friend of mine
• my mother’s only extant baby picture
• my very favorite oldest toy unicorn, whom I thought was utterly lost in time but is safe and sound after all!!!!!!

• a newfound sense of gratitude for my upbringing, and a fresh resolve to not needlessly hoard like this ever again ❤