The four of us were coming upon our last year of high school and, as anyone can attest, it is a time of solidarity with your peers, of excitement for the future, of wanting to hold on to the past. Although I don't know whose idea it was to make the time capsule or the details of how it all came together (I have a strong feeling that we were inspired by an episode of Saved by the Bell, you know which one I'm talking about), one night my friends Sonya, Sadaf, and I gathered at our friend Stacy's house carrying armfuls of stuff we wanted to include in our time capsule.
I couldn't tell you really all the things I personally included, but I remember we all cut off a section of our hair (WHY) and wrote predictions about where we thought we would be when we finally retrieved the time capsule in 10 years time. I have vague memories of saying that I would be in a producer's chair in 10 years and that our missing-but-ever-thought-of friend, Joanna, would be wearing bonnets and sundresses and have a small army of children.
We put everything in 1 small tin box and 1 cardboard box, then put the boxes in a garbage bag--totally secured from the elements, I know. Dressed in all black like the cliche we were, we piled into a car armed with two shovels, flashlights, and the time capsule.
We drove to our high school campus. Under the cover of night we buried the time capsule under 2 inches of dirt--the place we decided to bury it had concrete-like soil that was impossible to break through, and then the sprinklers went on and we gave up trying to trying to dig deeper when we were getting soaked and water was entering our shallow hole in the ground.
And that was that.
Flash forward 10 years and the four of us are back together again in San Diego for Stacy's wedding. Much like our former selves, we dressed in black but convened at my house this time to not only dig up our time capsule, but also to make a new one!
We tried to include tokens of the things we'd done and experience over the last 10 years. I threw in some small trinkets from my travels in Southeast Asia, some photos, and the moleskine I used when I first got to Korea--as in, THE moleskine. You travelers know the significance of that moleskine and can only imagine how hard it was for me to part with it.
And now for photos in dark lighting:
Getting the new time capsule ready
Sonya and Stacy going through Stacy's "FB box" full of the best stuff from our high school days.
On the front, it says "What a lover." On the back is a GIANT list of all the people we considered "lovers"-- attractive and desirable guys, and not our real lovers, because I think I'd keep having Orlando Bloom as my lover a secret and not publicize it on an iron-on shirt thank you very much.
Lab reports.
Sonya's drawing of JC from Nsync that she gave to Stacy.
The one on the left is FREDDIE, the senior boy we loved as freshmen (although Graham was way hotter). For one morP he wore a pig costume, and he was in an airbands group called "Kids Incorporated." This was made by Sonya, but we don't know who the person is on the right.
The new time capsule! Hopefully it withstands the elements and years better than the first one!
It was so bizarre and hilarious going back to our old high school as 27/28 year olds. So much has changed and we had no idea if the school had upgraded its security, if the fences and gates would be locked, or what we would find when we got there. There was an air of uneasy nervousness as we drove onto school grounds, and it was such a dramatic contrast to 10 years ago when we were fearless and the atmosphere was predominated by the feeling of reckless excitement. We kept thinking about what we would do or say if we were somehow caught, and it occurred to us that we had more to lose this time around, or, I should say, something to lose this time around (we had nothing as 17/18 year olds).
After much ado, we gathered our supplies, parked our car in the shadows, and slipped onto campus towards the spot that contained our time capsule. To be honest, I had high doubts about being able to find it again. We weren't sure if it had been found (it was only covered in 2 inches of dirt, mind you), and after like an hour of solid digging, our hands blistered from the wood of the shovels, constantly fearing getting caught, and AGAIN, the sprinklers going off on us, we started to doubt if maybe we had remembered incorrectly and were digging in a completely wrong spot.
The dirt was still concrete-like, and there were all these crazy roots growing everywhere, and more than once Sadaf got frustrated and started ripping out roots with her bare hands. We were at the point of giving up when Stacy suggested digging under this particular root that we had ignored earlier. I dug in and there was a flash of white.
It was like the a choir of angels started to sing.
Immediately we got down into the hole and using our hands, we discovered the white plastic bag we had used to put our boxes in! Finally prying the very worn time capsule from the jaws of the earth, we threw in our new time capsule, covered it up again with 2 inches of dirt, and very tiredly made our way back, happy in our discovery.
And a discovery it was.
Sonya said it best, I think, in likening our time capsule to the remains of the Titanic.
Everything was disgusting and reeked like 10 years of neglect and copper pennies. Water had destroyed and aged much of what we had included in the time capsule. Our letters to ourselves and our predictions were fused together and were unable to be separated and read. We picked through the time capsule like vultures a carcass, trying to find anything worth having. Oddly enough, we did find our hair (disgusting), and the things that survived the most were pictures of nsync that had heavy-duty lamination!
As disappointed as we were with how poorly our time capsule survived over the years, overall it was a great adventure and I'm so so happy that we had the brilliant idea to do this when we had nothing in our heads as youth about to set-off into the world. But more than that, I'm grateful we're all still friends and were able to successfully retrieve the time capsule!
THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAnd um yeah...the hair?? HAHAHAHA!