One Man's Trash

Yesterday was New Year's Day. Happy belated New Year! Our friends had a small gathering at Pam's house: we had Thai food and Martinelli's; there was mango mousse cake from Diamond Bakery--yum! Doris (of Dating Dorkus) made a cameo before going off to what, I can only imagine, was a much less exciting, much less intellectually stimulating gathering with her Whitney H.S. friends.

And Doris brought a treat: a copy of our elementary school newspaper, the Carver Cub Courier (the alliteration is impressive for a grade school publication, right?) This was no ordinary Carver Cub Courier, however. On the front page--above the fold--of this edition of this particular Carver Cub Courier was an article on Kids for Saving the Earth. Ok, so there was never any true "fold" in our school newspaper, but had we such a bisection, I'm sure that articles on KSE would have appeared on the more distinguished upper side.

Doris exhumed the paper from the catacombs of personal material she has managed to amass over the years. I'm not sure exactly what else is in this veritable museum of natural (and unnatural) history, but after seeing this invaluable nugget, I am eager to go spelunking through it to discover what other goodies lie waiting for me.

You see, I am a discarder. My family members are all packrats, so, as a coping mechanism, I have developed a discarder's mentality. Anything that doesn't seem immediately valuable is hurtled into the trash. Old birthday cards, tickets to movies I have long forgotten, old homework assignments, school projects--everything must go. Why make room to store something that I will likely never take out and view again? At one time in my life, I preserved such items for their sentimental value, but I saw the diminishing returns they brought me, and decided it was best just to send them off the landfill. They seemed valuable for a few weeks (or even months) after I acquired them, but a few years later, when I unearthed them while cleaning my room, I discovered they were just meaningless junk.

But that was my mistake. I just didn't keep them long enough. You see, little mementos like these are a lot like stocks: you acquire them, their value decreases after a couple years, and the unwise man will sell, sell, sell to remove their deadweight from the ledger of his life. Doris, packrat that she is, judiciously saves such trinkets. She knows that over long periods of time (20 to 40 years), the market invariably yields handsome returns for those patient enough to wait it out. And so it is with delectable treasures such as these: if you wait it out, they will bring back long-forgotten memories of times 15, 20, or 25 years ago.

Here is a copy of the first page:
(You'll notice that I was an editor, and that my sister was some sort of contributing writer.)

And just for fun, here's a certificate Doris saved from our Kids for Saving the Earth days:

I'm glad Doris saved these tidbits of her past; I wished I hadn't so hastily discarded my old memories. One man's trash is another man's treasure...and eventually it becomes the first man's treasure, too.