The Time Capsule

Today I took a sick day and managed to make it fairly productive. Recently, I'd done a lot of filing and had a pile of paperwork I wanted to put into a storage box. I kept those boxes in the garage and they're full of records from the Air Force, taxes and other paperwork I decided to keep.

I took them into the living room and decided to go through them to see what I had in them. It was amazing! I had file pouches for each year I was in the AF Reserves (back to 1996), taxes back to 1998, credit card and utility records back to 2002 when I moved to Dallas from St Louis, and even found a package of photos mom sent me a few years back. There were even 4 notebooks of notes I'd taken during chemistry classes back in Germany. What an amazing find!

I realized that I really didn't need all this stuff so I sorted through it to figure out what could be shredded. I ended up with a stack of file folders about 2 feet tall. I kept only the past few years tax records and some house records. Everything else had to go.

So as I sat on the floor, watching bad morning TV and shredding, I found myself going through a pile of memories. The bulk of the paper were travel vouchers and pay statements from my time in the Reserves. Occasionally, a large packet would bring me back to my trips to Germany, Barbados, Panama and Honduras. THere were the many trips to St Croix, Florida and Hawaii.

There were records of being in my favorite room at the Buccaneer in St Croix. There were the numerous quick trips to Biloxi from both St Louis and Dallas. I even found some of the paperwork from my brief time in the IL Guard as a Boom Operator.

I had saved every one of my LES's, Leave and Earnings Statement, (pay stubs for your civilians). Those too, got shredded. Well, all except my very first one. I kept that first pay stub from my time in basic training, just to see how far I'd come. It was for around $300 for my first 2 weeks of service. I think I spent that much today just running errands. It's amazing how much changes in 22 years, isn't it?

Each one was its own little archive of memories. I almost hestiated to shred them, but realistically, there was no reason to save them. 2 large garbage bags are now by my back fence, waiting to be sent away. It's a sad way to say goodbye to memories, but at the same time, it's a clean feeling to be rid of stuff I just don't need.

What are in your personal archives?