My Time Capsule

September 6, 2017.Reading time 4 minutes.

After being less than impressed by the solar eclipse, one of my co-workers mentioned that if she were still teaching, she could put her glasses into a time capsule. I’ve never made a time capsule.

I recall discussing the matter with my friend, Jeff when we were about ten years-old. At that point, we each had very limited offerings for a relevant time capsule: a favorite baseball card or two, a four-leaf clover (actually a three-leaf clover with the largest leaf split), some Mad Magazines and Spy vs. Spy comics, awesome fire-sided Hot Wheels, marbles, and a switchblade we bought at the local fair despite our parents’ warning us not to. We also had a healthy debate about how much food it would take to sustain Hobo, our bullfrog. We gave up on adding him because one could never know how long the time capsule would be buried.

Our naïve eyes could picture the awe and wonder with which future generations would behold our “valuables”. We just never actually got around to burying one.

So much has changed. I have more expensive things now – better junk. But the question remains – what would I put in a time capsule? What would you put in yours? What are those things that symbolize your experiences, likes, skills, and passions. Have you ever pondered the question?

Since it will be opened in the future, there are new considerations. Unlike when I last thought about it in the 70’s, technology has changed everything. No longer is on-hand knowledge limited to our shelf of World Book Encyclopedias or a bicycle ride to the library – we have everything at our fingertips. My assumption is that availability to knowledge will only increase in the future. Instead of having to look something up on a device, maybe everything will just pop into your head when you want to know it. So they will already know all about every piece of junk I could lock away.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I feel like my time capsule would be lame. I disappoint plenty of people right now, I don’t need to stretch that into future people.

Still, I came up with a few important things and I’d like to add some weird stuff just to keep them guessing.

A picture of my family
a saw blade with fake, dried blood to gross them out and make them wonder
tie-dye long johns
a Homer Simpson bank that you have to put coins in his butt
my grandfather’s World War II Bible
Russian nesting dolls with strange writing on them that looks like a code
a running shoe insole preserved in a baggie so they can smell my marathons
my favorite book, David Copperfield, in case libraries have been destroyed by aliens
a Hawaiian leis – just because it is soothing.
a Smiley for Kylie wristband.

I calculated the dimensions of this time capsule and the proper burial depth.

That seems like a lot of digging. It’s still pretty hot down here in Georgia and I’ve got a sprinkler system to avoid…

Then it dawned on me – I’ve got a septic tank that tells a story all its own. Forget the shovel, I’ll just let that be my time capsule. Pity the future fool who digs that up.

Don’t Teach the Old Man

August 23, 2017.Reading time 4 minutes.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Wednesday post to let you know that we’ve hijacked Dad’s blog. We hate that we had to do it, but there are some things that need to be said.

Dad is old. This should be obvious and it probably is to everyone… except him.

It used to be okay because he worked and played around people his age. But now he has a few millennials in his office and they’ve been teaching him things. Bad things. He came home the other day and said we were “acting all boujee.” Did he use it in context? Yes. Should he ever use a word like boujee? No!

Someone is responsible for this and it has to stop.

Actually, it all started a few years ago when he heard Boom Boom Pow in a spin class. The fact that he was in a spin class is worrisome enough. More troubling is how many times he said we were, “so 2000 and late.” Seriously! He kept calling himself Mark I Am until we finally convinced him that the nickname was a play on the guy’s real name, William. After we caught him singing Apple Bottom Jeans we stole his iPod, wiped it, and changed the iTunes password so he couldn’t reload it. Desperate times…

But other things began happening:

He started wearing sleeveless shirts to the gym. We thought it was a phase, but day after day he was wearing something akin to a high-schooler’s bro-tank.
On a shopping trip to Old Navy, he wandered off and we caught him trying on skinny jeans. Skinny jeans! There he was, giggling at himself in the mirror. He knew it was wrong. But still, the man was in skinny jeans.
He downloaded Snapchat. Fortunately, he can’t figure it out and can only play with the filters, but still.

Now he’s decided that he’s woke and is using words like boujee. No, just no!

You cannot teach the old man modern words. He is not responsible with words – he never has been. Every school report card he ever got has a comment in the behavior column that goes something like this, “Mark needs to think before he speaks.” Obviously, he never learned and needs guidance. Listen, someday (probably sooner than we think) we will be guiding him to the toilet. That’s not going to be your problem, it will be ours unless we can move far away. We’re just asking for a little help on the words issue.

You might be wondering why this is a big deal. The ramifications of his behavior are far-flung and harmful to our family as well as himself. If he won’t stay in the appropriate word zone, he starts feeling younger than he is. Not only does he embarrass himself and us, he feels chipper enough to do things old folks just shouldn’t do… like climb ladders. We found out what a disaster that can be last year when he ended up in the emergency room.

This is for his own good.

Right now he’s sitting in his chair trying to figure out why his password won’t open anything. 1234… Seriously? This is who you’re willing to trust with modern dialect? We will let him back into his electronics soon, we just need some assurances that you people won’t feed his delusions of youth. I think we can agree it isn’t good for him or society in general.