NOT KEEPING SCORE

A MULTI-PART EXPLORATION ON WHETHER PEOPLE CHANGE, THROUGH THE COMPLETELY UN-SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS OF PERSONAL ITEMS FOUND IN SHANNON DEJONG’S “SPECIAL BOX” AND ASSORTED CHILDHOOD MEMORABILIA*[1]

Part I

I know I’ve been doing all this talking about the joys of “detaching,” purging, and finding oneself as materially empty as Buddha’s wallet — but I’m doubling back to spend a moment to tout the joys of Stuff in all of its messy materialistic goodness.

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries” -A.A. Milne 1882-1956

Upon moving back home, I have an entire new closetful of impedimenta to go through — as a testament to just how obliging my parents are, not only have they stowed my childhood memorabilia for years (awards, fingerpaintings, macaroni “art”), they have also stored away boxes of my sentimental crap and old furniture I didn’t want to tote around from apartment to apartment.

These are very devoted parents; these are very accommodating people — (these are former elementary school teachers.) Ah.

Part of the deal of me moving home, in addition to free tech support and installation of Wi-Fi, was my promising to go through these things.

I have this “Special Box” I started as a kid in which I was allowed to keep my sentimental items, and only what would fit in the box was allowed to be kept — this is a tried and true method for any of you Secret Sentimentalites out there (go ahead and raise your hand, this is a “safe space”) to reign in your trinket collecting and prevent ending up with too many boxes of movie ticket stubs or pressed flowers from ex-boyfriends.

Yes, I’m talking to you.

I haven’t looked through mine in years, and I’m not sure if I’m excited or embarassed to report what I discovered:
1. People really don’t change all that much, and
2. People do change very much, (in that order)

HOW PEOPLE DON’T CHANGE*[2]
I joke around a lot on Not Keeping Score about my obsession with fortune cookies, the Magic 8-Ball™, and my belief in divine cosmic shenanigans. And I’ve come to enjoy these little scraps of paper a great deal –but really, I’m a pragmatic girl of rational sensabilities… right?

Well, apparently I’ve always harbored a love for the cosmically destined: I found an entire jewelry box full of fortune cookie messages I had been hoarding since grade school. I have no recollection of having collected them, but there they were: a collection inches thick, in an envelope, in a box, in another box, in the room I had grown up in.

Honestly, I was a little embarrassed. I thought all this future forecasting was in jest; when it comes to what I really believe, I thought I looked to reason, logic–sound fact. But discovering that I had always been collecting this “horoscopic” crap…well. Perhaps there has been a little denial at work about just what faculty — head or heart — I truly operate from.

Apparently, without even knowing it, I’ve always been this little girl who secretly wishes for meaning to trump chaos in her universe.

Perhaps we all, without even knowing it, are who we always were. We just forget it sometimes, and it takes a little homecoming to remember.

* * *

And of course I found the love letters — let’s hear it for old love letters! I read through correspondence between an old boyfriend of mine I had senior year in high school, and I tell you, every single one of them — as sweet as they were (he was a bungee-jumping, gymnastic instructor that listened to Jewel and wrote me poetry) — were about how scared shitless we were to trust the other. We spent an entire 8 month relationship afraid of what eventually happened anyway: we broke up.

What a shame! I wish we could have gotten over the fearfulness, embraced the inevitable, and enjoyed each other while we had the time together, come what may. Shit — it would have been 8 months of limber, fearless Jewel-soundtracked sex! Backed with love, of course.

But reading the letters, so quaint in their fear, made me feel small and timid; although I like to think I’ve grown in my ability to open up to others and embrace fear and love, I wonder just how much more capable I am 7 years later. Aren’t I still that girl afraid of the heights of love? What sane person really jumps wholeheartedly into something so virtiginous?

Where’s that bungee cord o’ love when you need it?

* * *

I also found all my old notebooks, which were filled with pages and pages of thoughts that could have come out of my head at age 14, 22, or yesterday.

I found a note reminding myself “not worry about the future but to focus on the present, because you can never know now what you’ll know then,” and if my future self could see me now, she would just shake her head and smile at how little I knew…

…only my future self, which is my present self, was looking back, and what I was doing was shaking my head and smiling at how little I know.

Do we ever know what we think we’ll know? Or do we just keep right on not knowing what we don’t?

* * *

To be continued…Check back in later to NotKeepingScore.com for the rest of IN FLUX: DO PEOPLE CHANGE?

*[1]Quite possibly the most lengthy and self-indulgent blog posting on NKS to date
*[2] Official non-scientific findings of incredibly non-incredible results