I was such a loser when I was a kid. Like a John-Hughes-Hollywood-Eighties-movie-typecast loser. Maybe we all imagine ourselves as being that special kind of ugly duckling, with the truth being too scary to contemplate: Maybe I was someone's bully or I was the kid who egged on the bullies screaming, "Sweep the leg," or maybe I was lower than the Hughes loser, someone who would never be shown in a movie.
When I think of who I was all those years ago, I'm both embarrassed and look-at-what-I've-become proud, as though the distance spanned between those two me's can only be measured in light-years. That distance is a lie, of course, though perhaps necessary to justify perceived successes and mollify the disappointments and failures. That thirteen-year-old me is still there inside: the socially awkward one who wouldn’t find a group he belonged to until college; the one who watched way too much TV and listened to records while lying on the floor with the speakers tented over his head; the one who was afraid of the Jaws shark appearing in any body of water, Christopher Lee vampires, the dark in his closet and under the bed, and the blinding flash of a nuclear bomb. That kid is all-too-frighteningly retrievable at times.
Now he’s here in a more tangible form. He’s in the contents of a weathered cardboard box sitting like a toadstool on my kitchen counter. Mom inexplicably plopped this time capsule in my lap on her way out the door after an impromptu visit. When I asked for an explanation, she said she thought I should have it. I pressed her for more of the why and she said, “Well, because it’s yours. It’s your stuff,” as though she was weary of the burden of having had to keep it for all those years.
Catherine is visiting her parents on the Cape and she took our daughter Izzy with her. I stayed home to finish edits (which remain stubbornly unfinished) on a manuscript that was due last week. Catherine and Izzy would’ve torn through this box-of-me right away and laughed themselves silly at the old photos of my stick figure body and my map of freckles and crooked teeth, the collection of crayon renderings of dinosaurs with small heads and ludicrously large bodies, and the fourth grade current events project on Ronald Reagan for which I’d earned a disappointing C+ and a demoralizing teacher comment of Too messy. And I would’ve reveled in their attention, their warm spotlight shining on who I was and who I’ve become.
I didn’t find it until my second pass through the box, which seems impossible as I took care to peel old pictures apart and handle everything delicately, as one might handle ancient parchments. That second pass occurred two hours after the first, and there was a pizza and multiple beers and no edits between.
The drawing that I don’t remember saving was there at the bottom of the box, framed by the cardboard and its interior darkness. I thought I’d forgotten it; I know I never had.
The initial discovery was more confounding than dread inducing, but hours have passed and now it’s late and it’s dark.