Treasures of Darkness, Take II

Every summer, we have a goal of cleaning out my closet. I remember having this goal in the fourth grade. I had it last summer. And probably most in between. Needless to say, the closet has built up a few layers of miscellaneous objects over the years I avoided this task.

I spent last summer with quite a few boxes full of college things piled up in my room, and when I made it home after finals this year, I decided that this summer, I wanted them out of the way. In a closet or something. A closet with space for all my college stuff.

Oh.

Well, I guess ten years is more than long enough to put off a chore, so I actually got to it. When you haven't cleaned your closet since the fourth grade, you find some interesting things buried in there. For example:

• An old English worksheet on writing theses, including a practice thesis on why the Wonder Chef, a completely innocuous character who gives the player recipes in the video game Tales of Symphonia, is evil.
• My glockenspiel from Kindermusick. Apparently, I knew what a glockenspiel was when I was in kindergarten. I'm kind of impressed with my little self. I think I also had a dulcimer with only two strings. Its body was made out of cardboard.
• An old vocabulary exercise in which I use vocab words to write a story about Voldemort making his Death Eaters throw a birthday party for a very reluctant Severus Snape.
• A sticky note containing the following list (how these things are related is completely beyond me):
• Jones soda bottles
• snuggies
• cereal marshmallows
• screws (Phillips/straight)
• musical instruments (C, F, Bb)
• Draco Malfoy
• An extremely bizarre short story about a guy named Fred who hitchhiked to Albuquerque with three cats (all named Fred) and then mailed himself in a box with the cats back to a gas station where the protagonist’s older brother worked. There were also a lot of clay turtles involved.
• Chao comics. Lots and lots of chao comics.
• A blue work shirt with the name “Dean” on it in red. It was my Science Olympiad team shirt in high school. One of my other friends was “Steve,” if I remember correctly. We also had “Scott,” “Bob,” and “Bobby,” among others. I think one of our lab coats was named “Gertrude.”
• A page of physics notes including an explanation of gravitational potential energy becoming kinetic energy via drawings of a turtle, said turtle on a roof, and said turtle falling off said roof, as well as the following two quotes from my physics teacher:
• “The only thing in the universe that’s zero Kelvins is Voldemort’s heart. But using his heart at the center of your heat engine is probably hard, because he’s mean. And he has magic powers. He could turn you into something, like a newt.”
• “If you can invent a bucket that can hold fusion, you’ll win the Nobel Prize. If not for physics, then for peace. Because you could solve all the wold’s energy problems. Unless you gave it to a country that wouldn't share.”
• An undated tardy excuse note from my freshman year of high school that I never had to use and I believe I saved with the intention of using it my senior year. Still never used it. Alas.

This is why closets need cleaning out periodically, folks. Sure, because all that random old stuff builds up in there, but maybe also because there are a few childhood treasures hidden in there, too.

Treasures of Darkness, Take I