Coming Out of the Closet

Deciding one afternoon to clear out all of the old crap in my closet to make room for my new crap, I set up a basket for recycling, emptied out my trash can, and delved deep into the dusty, long forgotten corners of my closet. I've kept some really stupid stuff over the years, but some of the stuff I found was really interesting, and I'd forgotten about a lot of it. Among the more notable items-

-A cumberbund (those black things you strap around your waist) from a tux. I remember very specifically looking for this one afternoon before a choir concert in high school and not finding it. I had to race down to the nearest tux shop and buy one, and barely made it to the performance in time. I have two now I guess!

-A bra, blue skirt, and black top. ... Uhhh, what? I have no idea where these things came from.

-A bunch of sketch books. For a while I was convinced as a little kid that I wanted to be a comic book artist. The drawings really suck.

-A computer magazine from 1997. The ads are the best: laptops with 200 MHZ processors and 2.1 gigabyte hard drives for $6999! I held onto it, it's become far too valuable by now to ever throw away.

-A newspaper from New Zealand. Why would I save this thing?

-The outline for a story I wanted to write once, scribbled on an envelope. I had a nightmare once, and literally screamed after waking up from it. For a long time I wanted to write a book about it, but I'm just hopeless when it comes to writing fiction, so I just let what I wrote sit. This was a really valuable find though, I may try again in a while.

-Slips of paper with dreams written on them. I used to write them down a lot, not any more though.

-Fliers from when I taught guitar. $10 for a half-hour lesson. It was a stupid job to quit, now that I've actually spent time working at real jobs.

-The "Naked Issue" of the SUNY Purchase Independent. This annual edition of the campus magazine was in circulation right around the time I visited the campus. And you thought Ithaca was liberal.

-A copy of The Book of Mormon my stalker gave me for Christmas. This girl used to follow me home at night after rehearsals for the musical and watch me park in my driveway. Sometimes she'd park on my street facing the opposite way and watch me drive home. Thankfully it only went on for a few months.