My Childhood

I was recently given a bag of childhood stuff from my dad's office. I've been going through boxes of the stuff at my mom's house for years but this was a very concentrated set of report cards and notes and represented a snapshot of my childhood. I was a bit nervous about going through it since it was literally every single letter I had ever written and notes from every single parent teacher conference he had attended, but once I began exploring, I saw what a gift this, and those boxes from my mom, were.

My absolute favorite thing was a note that my dad took out of the mail. It was from a boy named Mike written to my in 6th or 7th grade, thanking me for attending his birthday party. It had never been opened but upon inspection it must have appear to my dad as some sort of awkward early teen advance. Why he thought a boy would write and mail me a love note and not just put it in my locker is totally beyond me. But the idea is adorable. I'm not sure he knew how unbelievable awkward I was around boys in middle (and high) school but he would perhaps have rested easily if he knew the first boy that asked me to slow dance was met with a shriek and a very awkward run out of the mess hall at camp. My weirdness was boy kryptonite and an overprotective dad was enough to scare any potential suitors. Maybe the US Postal system wasn't such a bad idea.

My second favorite find was a large percentage of baby teeth. If anyone needed proof that the tooth fairy doesn't exist they just need to look in this bag. There must be 15 teeth in there, all carefully taped to the notes that came with them. One note asked for the tooth back (to show my mom) while others asked from ridiculous amounts of money (see above). There is a whole mess of them from camp where I carefully wrapped them in color-coded stationary with a short explanation of how and where they came out, and a very loving "Mr Postman please hand cancel" written on the outside. The idea of these things sitting in a drawer a foot or two away from my dad for 20 years just makes me smile.

Finally, the report cards. I was a totally average kid with a few very obvious problems and strengths. I was very helpful in the class, worked well in groups, and was always happy to read when given any down time. The negative comments should just have been cut and pasted from year to year: bad handwriting, can't spell, and makes careless mistakes. My most treasured comment was "Meghan would do much better in math if she slowed down and didn't try to be the first in the class to finish". I also scored off the charts for all of my physical education markers and apparently loved to climb the ropes in the gym. Great so I was a hyper competitive gym rat in elementary school with the patience of a meth head.

I had been making good steps to do away with my pack rattery but I suspect finding this cache of my childhood will send me strait back to where I came from, two pack rats who loved their kids enough to save every little piece of childhood.