Dirty Drawers
I have this file cabinet in my home office. I got it when I was in grad school at Kansas State in 1992, and from that time until probably 1995, various pieces of paper found their way into the hanging files.
In 1995, however, I avoided putting anything into the drawers because it was a mess. I made a solemn declaration to my cats (I lived alone in 1995): "This file cabinet must be cleaned! Nothing shall be further filed until said cleaning!" My cats took note of this momentous occasion by sleeping and pooping on the floor outside their dirty litterbox.
Last night, nine years, a wife, two kids, a dog and one less cat later, I finally cleaned that damned file cabinet.
It was a virtual time machine, transporting me back to a peculiar period of my life that I had no urgent desire to relive. Essentially covering three years, it starts with my failed attempt at grad school, followed by two years of living alone, missing friends, accumulating awkward letters from past girlfriends, and some seriously bad attempts at creative writing.
The grad school stuff was just appalling. A re-reading of my papers, even the ones I got A's on, left me wondering just who was grading my work. I've seen better writing in George Lucas script. Just horrifically bad. Man, I couldn't put that stuff in the recycling bin fast enough. If my kids ever found that stuff, I'd be ashamed. Yes, I could keep it as a motivational tool, to show them what happens when you don't go to class and half-ass everything at the last minute, but I've got ample other display material for that particular lesson. I don't need to perpetuate the notion that I'm a great academic, but I do fancy myself a decent writer, and these papers which provide so much evidence to the contrary simply must go. Out!
Then, there were all the letters. Letters from past girlfriends, letters from friends. The girlfriend stuff immediately went out. I didn't even reread them. I'm a very sentimental person and all, and I have a certain place in my heart for most of those women, but that doesn't mean I need to have a space in my file cabinet. Truthfully speaking, it might have been different if any of the letters were in any way interesting or titillating, but most dealt with the minutae of lives lived 10 or more years ago, details I probably cared little about even at the time. You know how you hear stories about kids who discover their parents' letters years after the fact, finding revelations about steamy love affairs and such? Those letters don't exist for my kids to find. Instead, they'd find these letters and be like, "Damn. Dad dated some crazy women who liked to talk about their class schedule a lot." I'll save my kids the trouble. Out!
But there were a lot of other letters from friends, most of whom I'm still very close with today. I wasn't sure what to do with those letters. It's hard to read them, because at the time I missed these people a great deal, but at the same time, the friendships endured. Those letters were a bit of a lifeline to me, but I'm probably the only one who would really understand that. Do I keep them? For what purpose? It's not like someday my archives are going to be released, Harry Blackmun-style, only to reveal in-depth conversations with friends about the White Album. Jane suggested that perhaps I should send the letters back to the people who wrote them, because they might get a kick out of it. Yeah, maybe. But then they've got the same problem I have now, what to do with those letters? What's more, what if they were to retaliate and send me back some of the letters that I wrote to them? That's the last thing I need, more bad writing from my past. I'll probably keep the letters, read them once, and file for another ten years before reviewing the decision. In!
The creative writing efforts were an abomination. Actually, that's not true. I found most of them to be rather funny, but because I know they weren't really good, that just made me more embarrassed than anything. The most prominent items were a collection of stories that my friend Jim and wrote in college. The protagonist for the stories was a man named John Cocktoastin, and the idea was that he was about the biggest asshole on Earth. There's one, for example, where he goes to a chess tournament and gets his ass kicked by a bunch of kids, and he reacts very poorly to that. The writing is raw, very funny in places, and largely offensive. But hey, the guy was an asshole, right? Jim and I wrote these pieces in tandem, and almost completely without preparation. We would come up with a title, like, "John Cocktoastin vs. Godzilla", and then one of us would write for about 20 minutes. Then, we would switch, review what the other had written, and try to figure out where to take it from there. We'd each take about seven turns, and then end the story. It was our first creative writing experience, and it was a hell of a lot of fun. The stories became something of a mini-legend among Kansas high school debaters, who clamored for us to read the stories aloud during the time when we were teaching at debate camps. A sad and funny image to me now, us holding court with these crude stories. For some reason, we never took the writing to the next step and tried to do something that was better. Still, I will keep these stories. I surely hope to never read them or have them read by anyone again, but they represent a time that is important to me, when Jim and I discovered that we had a creative kinship and ability to floor ourselves with laughter, something that I expect will last for our lifetimes. In!
Most of the other stuff went in the "Out!" pile. Scoresheets from a game of Zonk! held about 10 years before. Fantasy baseball and basketball nonsense. Lots of bankstatements and such, from the days when nearly every one had an overdraw or some other mishap.
I'm glad I was able to largely view the contents of these drawers as "The Past".
I decided to keep one thing to show my kids. It's a rejection letter from the University of Minnesota Master's Program for Teaching. I had applied in '94, and was rejected. At the time, I had a lot of hope put into getting a letter that said something else, but that was the letter I received. Really, it was the only letter I could have received. I was rejected because my undergraduate and graduate academic record wasn't strong enough to merit consideration. I want my kids to understand that their actions and efforts will have consequences, even if it is hard to foresee those consequences at the time. There was a time when I wanted to be a teacher. And I know I would have been a great teacher. But it takes more than that, and I didn't have what it took, and by the time I realized that, it was too late to go get it.
But I also want them to see that letter because of a more important lesson it has to offer, and that is that when things happen that aren't a part of your plan, you just have to roll with it. You find a new direction. Before you know it, you're not thinking about that rejection letter anymore. You're working a crappy temp job and freaking out because you don't have a real job, and then you're writing down a bunch of negative thoughts in a notebook and having trouble sleeping and...
Well, on second thought, maybe I'll skip the two years immediately after the letter, and just make sure they know that in the end, everything can work out if you stay with it and enjoy life and make some breaks for yourself along the way.
I kept that letter initially because it meant something to me. I'll keep it now because it doesn't mean anything at all.
Now, my files are clean and organized for the first time since 1992. I would say that I can start on the inevitable task of accumulating all the detritus and miscellanea from the next 10 years of my life, but I'm concerned that the electronic age might mean that the next 10 years simply won't produce as much stuff to file. What we don't need today goes in the virtual Recycle Bin in a much shorter cycle than my paper files have grown accustomed to.
Ah, well. I don't plan on getting too many love notes or rejection letters in the next 10 years, anyway. It's probably going to be a pretty boring file next time.
11:29:19 AM 
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