Been There, Done That, Got the T-shirts

There's a little purge-a-thon goin' on around here. I think I'm nesting, because I'm trying to empty space all over the house to accommodate the inevitable baby paraphernalia bomb that will go off in a few months. It started with the file cabinet, then the closets and it finally migrated into the garage where a big Rubbermaid box has been taunting me for quite some time. It contained my commemorative T-shirt collection. I know I'm not the only one to hang onto their old "trophy T's" from childhood. I mean look at these beauties! I've got the National Science Olympiad shirt from every year for the better part of the nineties. I have some good memories in these shirts. Memories of periodic tables of the elements, tabulating larvae, burning plastic, and fending off the attentions of a certain pimply faced boy (who turned out to be a fine fella that works for the president and has 4 kids). Here's my favorite

But lest you think I was just a simple nerd in my youth, I also uncovered this one from Athletic Training. "it" generally referred to knees and ankles in high school, and way too many smelly sweaty football players.

There are a small pile of soccer referee badges and a few shirts from mission trips.

They are now gone. They will likely have another life as mattress stuffing or recycled fiber for who knows what industrial use. And I now have one more empty space on my garage shelving.

And in case you ever wondered what a few hundred dollars worth of Harvard Business School case studies looks like,

Yep, they didn't look too impressive straight out of the shrinkwrap either. I have weeded down the remnants of school a couple times. I was down to one shelf on the bookcase containing my favorite textbooks and a few notebooks. And since you're now thinking, "What on earth? Favorite textbooks?", they are Law, Accounting, Project Management and Spanish. Now I have 1 notebook and my books hidden away on the top shelf of the closet (since I never actually look at any of it, it hardly warrants prime real estate on the bookcase). But they are still there, and knowing they are there makes me a little bit happy. As I thumbed through it all tonight I read some of my old papers and they made me happy, wistful happy. I'll shut up now, I'm embarassing myself.