Saturday, March 20, 2010

Greetings Future People!

21 years ago I shoved several of my least important possessions into a metal box, taped it up and slapped a "Do Not Open Until 2010" label on it and hid it away for the sake of posterity. I assume I was inspired by one of the poorly written sitcoms of the day but regardless of motivation, the box was recently stumbled upon in my garage.

After consulting a calendar, I cracked open the box and will now dump the contents out upon the internet in a blog entry that could only be called: And here is the box in question: Sure, it's not much to look at now but I'm sure in its heyday it was the shiniest, most awesome box that the 1980's had to offer. Lest we forget how difficult it was to survive the '80's.

The first thing pulled from the time capsule seemed to be some kind of archaic audio medium. I had to clear both the metaphorical and literal cobwebs to get a handle on this so-called "cassette tape." While searching for something that could actually play the tape I had plenty of time to wonder just what exactly was contained in this message from the past. Time traveling information typically is more useful when it comes from the future.

But wonder no more...the audio has been captured, converted and I even added visual aids since all our attention spans have decreased in the last few decades. Here now is a message from a 12 year old future documentary filmmaker:

I guess the last gasps of the Cold War were at the forefront of the tween consciousness in 1989. Other than that it seems that some things never change since additional items included the comics (mentioned in the audio clip) and video game memorabilia. Most notably, this poster advertising Nintendo's most advanced games...at the time.
I'm genuinely surprised at how uninteresting most of the contents are. Although I certainly don't mean to undermine the significance of The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man #6, featuring the first appearance of Purplesaurus Rex!
I'm expecting a call from the Smithsonian about that one. But the rest of the lot reek of the mundane: a few baseball cards, a flyer for a school function, stamps, a 1989 almanac, a package of firecrackers, a 1989 calendar but not one single treasure map.

I get the distinct impression that I looked around my room and found items that met two criteria:

1. They could fit in the box
2. I didn't want them anymore

Well, lesson learned. The next box gets filled with with nothing but excitement, danger and intrigue...as long as I won't be needing it for the next 21 years.

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