Cleaning Out the Bookcase
We're having a 25-person dinner here this week so I decided a month ago that I'd better fix the place up, since the living room has remained untouched since 1989. I mean we clean and all, and I guess we've re-covered a sofa or two, but still: there was a real time-capsule in the room and that time-capsule was:This bookcase.
For behind the many books, which I have taken out one by one, and dusted and recategorized, I found many a vintage item:
- There was an ornament imprinted "Baby's First Christmas, 1976".
- There was two of the primitive musical instrument known as the recorder, often offered to school kids for their first attempt at music-making. I remember begging my kids to practice on this fiendish stick and then having to stifle a scream as they began doing it. Even today when I picked it up and played "Cotton-Eyed Joe" on it, I feel a jolt of electrical current worming up my spine.
- There was a video on the workings of the lower torso dating from my two year study of Anatomy.
- And finally there was a wee piece of paper that fluttered down as I removed the books. It was clearly written on a typewriter and it appears to date back far further in time than 1989. Its message: "I wish to borrow this book and will return it in one week."
And here they all are, together.
And here is the Pelvis, for your pleasure. Oh and an old timetable, also found...
But where are the children who played these recorders? Where is that baby from the Bicentennial? And now that I think of it, reminded by this wee strip of paper, where in tarnation is my copy of Tina Fey's Bossy Pants that I lent to I'm-not-sure-who 18 months and have not seen since?So much is lost along the way - sigh. Later today, I'll be putting the room back together but for now I think I'll comfort myself with watching my nice video. (Look at the lurid picture on the front! Love it! Half a pelvis is bette than none I always say. ;-))
